


this time i know it's for real

by salazarsslytherin



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: (mentioned) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bottom Freddie, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Past Domestic Violence, Romance, Semi-Public Sex, Single Parent AU, Top Brian, brian is a single dad, freddie is good with kids, i'll add tags as i go along and things actually happen, protective roger, this is just pure fluff for fluff's sake
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2019-12-25 13:12:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 50,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18262001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salazarsslytherin/pseuds/salazarsslytherin
Summary: It shouldn’t be this easy.  It’sneverthis easy.  Freddie knows; he’s been searching for this life for as long as he can remember, something small and quiet and perfect, something loving, and it’s not the sort of thing you can find on a Wednesday afternoon at Waitrose.Brian's a single dad with three kids, Freddie's an artist with seven cats.  The movie practically writes itself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is just random fluff because I love domestic romance and there is not enough of that for Freddie and Brian. So Here I Am. There's no real plot to this it's just fluffy.
> 
> I've changed the names and ages of Brian's kids so they're not the real ones because it felt a bit weird, and I also feel bad about killing off their mother so I'm trying not to mention her by name so if you want to pretend that in this 'verse the mother of his now fictitious kids is someone also fictitious, feel free!
> 
> Also I've set this in modern times for the sole purpose of them being able to send texts. Freddie has a rose gold iPhone. This isn't relevant in the slightest I just thought you should know.

Freddie doesn't know a _lot_ about children but he does know that the little girl shuffling around near the egg display in Waitrose with her bottom lip wobbling is terrified and trying not to show it. She's staring up at every adult she passes and getting more and more tearful with each one, until Freddie walks over and drops to one knee in front of her.

"Oh dear, darling, are you alright? Are you missing your parents?" he asks gently, because the root cause of her upset is fairly obvious given the unaccompanied wandering.

She stares at him with nervous, wide eyes for a moment before letting out a tiny sob and nodding. "I can't find my daddy!" she wails and Freddie hastily pats her head, panicking just a tiny bit.

"Oh, not to worry, my dear!" he says cheerfully. "We can find him in a jiffy. Where did you last see him?"

"I don't _know_!" she sobs, starting to really cry, now. People are beginning to look their way and Freddie tries his best to ignore them, hoping nobody thinks he's trying to kidnap this lost child or something.

"Hmm, okay. Well I'll tell you what we can do—we can call out for him over the speakers! And tell him you're lost and he can come and collect you, how does that sound?" Freddie suggests.

The girl perks up a bit at the idea of using the big speaker-phone and nods. "Okay," she agrees, wiping her sleeve over her face. Her dress is horribly rumpled and one of her shoelaces is untied.

Freddie quickly re-ties it for her while he's knelt down and offers a small smile. "Wonderful," he says, glad the idea has been accepted. "What's your dad called?"

"Daddy," the girl says, with an adorable albeit useless confidence.

"Ah...do you know what other people call him?" Freddie asks hopefully.

"His name's Daddy," she assures Freddie, sniffing a bit to rid the last of the tears.

Freddie can't help but laugh, thoroughly enamoured. "Alright," he says. "What about your name, darling?"

"Lily," she says, grinning. "Lily May."

"What a lovely name!" Freddie tells her. "I'm Freddie. I have a cat called Lily, you know. She's very beautiful."

"You have a _cat_?" Lily asks in wonderment. "I want a cat!"

"I have seven cats," Freddie confides, getting to his feet.

He's just blown the poor girl's mind, her mouth is open as far as it will go and she's just staring at him.

"Seven!" she squeaks. "We don't even have _one_!" She seems to have forgotten all about her missing father in her indignation at this and happily falls into step beside Freddie as he leads her out of the aisle, slipping her small hand into his as if she's known him all her life. "What are they all called? Do you have any pictures?"

Freddie does have pictures on his phone but he can't waste time stopping to show her when her father is probably worried sick somewhere, so he starts reeling off their names and telling her what they all look like and how they act, quite enjoying this rapt audience.

"Then there's Tiffany, you'd love her, she's _very_ fluffy and just _loves_ to be cuddled, she'd sit on your lap all day long if she could! Lazy little thing," Freddie says fondly.

Lily has began swinging his hand back and forth, skipping and hopping along as she gazes up at him. " _She's_ my favourite!" she declares, as she has following every description Freddie has so far given of his cats.

"Well, you haven't heard about _Delilah_ yet," Freddie says. "Delilah—"

"There he is!" Lily cries suddenly, tugging so hard on Freddie's hand she nearly dislocates his wrist.

Freddie scrambles to switch direction and follow her along the toiletries aisle, and occupied by only one man. He can only be Lily's father; he has the exact same wild, curly hair, only his looks rather less brushed than Lily's, and hers doesn't exactly look like it had been lovingly brushed that morning.

He's stood staring at the shelves in front of him, one hand extended out to rest on the handle of his trolley, in which a baby is peacefully watching him from the little child-seat while an older boy is busily trying to climb in.

As they get closer, Freddie realises that he may actually be the tallest man he's ever come across, and also the least observant because he doesn't even notice the two of them until Lily taps him on the leg.

He looks down and starts a bit, eyes flicking between Lily and Freddie and his eyes go wide. "Lily!" he gasps. "Did you wander off?"

Freddie eyes him suspiciously; had he not even _noticed_?

Though, now that Freddie's looking at him, he's not surprised. The poor man looks _shattered_ , eyes bloodshot and dark-ringed, hair frazzled, stubbled face washed a ghostly white under the harsh aisle lights. His shoulders slope with exhaustion and his shirt is buttoned wrong, not to mention stained by what Freddie assumes is baby food of some kind.

None of that, however, is enough to detract from how stunningly _gorgeous_ he is and Freddie feels quite stunned for a moment, blinking stupidly at him until he remembers himself.

"She got lost," he says quickly, holding his and Lily's joined hands out so as to hand her over.

The man presses a hand over his eyes for a moment and mutters, " _God_ " before he swoops down to scoop Lily up and hug her close. "I'm so sorry," he says to both of them, awkwardly rearranging Lily onto his hip.

Lily rests her head on his shoulder, instantly forgiven. "Freddie found me," she says, pointing at Freddie. "We were going to call for you on the speaker so you would come and get me. Freddie has _seven_ cats and you don't even have _one_ ," she adds accusingly.

The man's eyebrows jump at hearing this piece of information and Freddie almost regrets telling Lily about all his cats because now this beautiful creature is going to think he's some kind of crazy cat man which...is probably true, all things considered, but it doesn't really scream _I'm stable, date me_. Mind, neither does _anything_ about Lily's father.

"Brian," the man says, offering the hand that isn't holding Lily. "Freddie, is it?"

"That's right," Freddie says, shaking his hand and trying not to notice how big and warm it is. Christ, he's hopeless.

"Thanks so much for bringing her back, she must've wandered off and gotten lost when I wasn't looking," Brian says shamefully, giving Lily a worried squeeze.

"That's alright," Freddie says. He smiles automatically and his hand flies up to cover his mouth before he clears his throat. "It was quite the treat to shop with her for a while, actually."

Lily beams at him and Freddie gives her a gentle poke in the side that makes her scream with laughter even though he's barely touched her.

"Still, thank you," Brian says sincerely. "I don't know what I'd have done to look around and see her gone."

With the state he's in, Freddie reckons it might well have tipped him over the edge.

"Are you...is everything alright?" he asks carefully. He doesn't want to pry but Brian has clearly seen better days and isn't firing on all pistons today.

Brian gives a self-deprecating little laugh. "Is it that obvious that it's not?" he asks, shaking his head at himself. "I'm...well. To tell you the truth I never knew there were so many brands of fucking _nappies_."

Lily gasps and claps her hand over Brian's mouth. "Daddy said a _bad_ word!" she tells Freddie, eyes wide and amused.

Freddie snorts. "He did," he agrees. "He'll have to get a swear jar and put some money in." He meets Brian's eyes when he says that and Brian rolls them at him, but in a friendly way that makes Freddie's heart jump irrationally.

"Sorry," Brian mumbles against Lily's palm, and she removes it. "But seriously...there are so many. How the—how are you supposed to know which ones to use?"

Freddie turns to stare at the display, which _is_ , admittedly, intimidatingly full of a million different kinds of nappies. About a thousand blue-eyed babies seem to stare at Freddie from coloured cardboard in all directions and he understands suddenly why he found Brian just stood here staring. Where do you even start?

"For the little one, I assume?" Freddie asks, glancing at the baby in the trolley seat.

"Right," Brian agrees. "Emma."

"Well why don't you just look in her changing bag, see which ones she already has?" Freddie suggests.

Brian blinks a couple of times. "God, I didn't even think of that." He puts Lily down, whereupon she immediately limpets herself to Freddie's leg, and turns to look in the trolley, which has in it two tins of baby formula and one dark-haired, very pleased looking boy. Definitely no changing bag.

"It's in the car," the boy says helpfully, stretching his legs out and kicking the bars. "You forgot it."

"Fuck," Brian mutters.

"Daddy said a bad word again!" Lily pipes up, swinging on Freddie's leg like a maypole just as the boy—Lily's older brother, presumably, shouts, "Fuck!"

"Jack said a bad word too!" Lily announces.

Brian jolts and stares at him. " _Jack_!" he scolds. "You shouldn't say that!"

Freddie is torn between edging away and trying to help somehow, not that he knows how.

"Mum let me say it," Jack insists, standing up in the trolley. "She _always_ let me say it!"

"No she did not," Brian says sternly.

"She _did_!" the boy insists, and his face turns red all of a sudden, eyes welling. "Where's _Mummy_! I miss my mummy!"

Brian's mood flips instantly and he softens at once, pulling the boy out of the trolley and holding him close while Lily keeps such a hold on Freddie that sneaking away isn't really an option. What the fuck has he gotten himself into?

Brian rocks the little boy, Jack, back and forth and mutters soothingly in his ear until he calms down a bit.

Freddie tries to disentangle Lily, carefully prising her hand away from him, but she just clutches tighter.

"God, I—I'm so sorry to intrude," Freddie says lowly, glancing over at Brian absolutely mortified. This is clearly some kind of private moment, something's happened with the mother, he assumes, and the last thing he needs is some fucking stranger hanging around while he's trying to comfort his distressed children. "I'll just—"

He makes another go at separating himself from Lily but she shakes her head vehemently. "No!" she shouts. "I want to see your cats! I want to see Tiffany!"

"Lily," Brian says gently. "Come on, let Freddie go, he's got his own shopping to get on with."

"NO!"

Freddie plants his hand on top of her head, entirely out of his depth here, and helplessly shrugs at Brian. "I don't mind, uh...helping, if you, you know. If you need." There's no changing bag to check the nappies but an idea suddenly occurs to Freddie and he shuffles closer to the trolley, hindered by the child clamped around his leg. "May I?" he asks, gesturing at the baby.

Brian nods and watches as Freddie carefully opens three of the poppers on her onesie and tugs the leg aside to look at her nappy. "Look! Size four," Freddie says triumphantly, doing her back up. He reaches out to grab the nearest pack that in size four and dumps it in Brian's trolley. "Sorted. What's next?"

Brian's staring at him like he's just made some incredible discovery or announced that he's a secret millionaire and Freddie flushes a bit under the attention.

"I never would have thought to just... _check_ ," Brian says, shaking his head.

"We need toothpaste!" Lily pipes up. "Daddy only has grown-up stuff and it burns my mouth."

"Toothpaste," Freddie says, glancing at Brian for permission and grasping the handle of the trolley when his expression gives it, hauling it back down the aisle. Lily lets go of his leg to skip alongside him.

Brian trails after him, still carrying Jack. "I don't know what brand they used to use," he says quietly, stopping dead just a few yards down the aisle, this time in front of the many, many coloured boxes of toothpaste.

"Okay, well…" Freddie grabs two different children's toothpastes and holds them out for Lily's inspection. "Which one do you want?"

Lily chooses neither, reaching past Freddie for a pink Disney princess tube, holding it high. "This one!"

Jack turns around at the sudden volume in his sister's voice and scowls at her selection. "I don't want _that_ one."

"Which do you want?" Freddie asks, offering him the same selection as before.

Jack wriggles to get down and steps up to inspect the boxes on display, choosing a Batman box and holding it out to Freddie, who takes it from him and tosses it in the trolley.

Freddie isn't really sure _how_ but he ends up walking through the entire shop with them, even after Brian takes back over pushing the trolley and Freddie somehow ends up carrying Lily, her warm little face pressed against his neck as she grows tired.

Brian, Freddie soon learns, is fucking _awful_ at making a decision. Any decision. Like what brand of bread to get for the children, and how many cans of baked beans he'll need. Freddie, who is not at all qualified to be making these decisions for a family of four, just guesses and makes it up as he goes along. It's probably wrong but at least they'll have _something_ when they get home tonight and won't still be in Waitrose come closing time, stranded in the world foods aisle unable to decide on a shape of pasta because one child wants twists and the other wants shells.

They all walk out together, shopping trolley now full of packed carrier bags, both children happy and excited because Brian had allowed them to choose a sweet each (" _Only_ for after dinner"), and Freddie pauses at the taxi rank. He hadn't even bought anything in the end, can't actually remember what the fuck he'd gone into the shop for in the first place.

"This is me," Freddie says, waving a hand at an idling car to catch the driver's attention. "Good luck with unpacking, my dears, even _I_ can't remember half of what's in there," he adds with a small, covered laugh.

"Oh." Brian looks suddenly gutted, but it's nothing compared to Lily.

"Don't go!" she gasps, clutching Freddie's jacket.

"I have to go home, sweetheart," Freddie tells her gently, touched.

"Well, at least let me give you a lift, if you're going to get a taxi," Brian puts in, jerking his head in a direction somewhere across the car park.

Freddie hesitates for half a second before he shrugs and waves the taxi driver off, which just about makes Lily's day and the clouds suddenly clear from Brian's expression, as well. He leads them across the car park and Freddie is pleasantly surprised when they reach his car; he doesn't know much about them but with three kids, he'd been expecting Brian to drive a people-carrier of some kind, full of pushchairs and toys and crushed crisps (Freddie has friends who have children and he does _not_ go in their cars). It's a small car, though, and it _is_ full of car-seats but it's surprisingly clean and tidy inside, just a box of papers tucked into the footwell behind the driver's seat and a pair of sunglasses on the passenger's seat that Brian quickly scoops up before Freddie sits down.

He puts them on while he's driving and Freddie's heart nearly stops, he has to stare intently out of the window for a long while trying to control himself. His _kids_ are in the back, for fuck sake.

"So…" Brian says as they pull onto the main road, lowering his voice so his chattering children don't overhear. "This might be a bit forward but...well. You really helped me out back there, I really appreciate it. I wanted to ask if you'd join us for dinner. I know Lily'd be over the moon, and I'd, well. I'd like it." Brian clears his throat and gives Freddie a quick smile before he focuses back on the road.

 _Do_ not _read into that,_ Freddie tells himself sternly. This is stupid, he should say no and go home and forget Brian, no matter how attractive he is. He's messy, he has _kids_ , and Freddie doesn't dare let himself wonder what's going on with the mother... _complicated_ barely even begins to cover it. He's almost certainly straight, it's a recipe for disaster, for weeks of Freddie lying on the sofa at home feeling wrecked after yet another failed whirlwind romance that he's built up in his head.

"I'd love to." Freddie's never before been accused of making smart decisions and there's no point in starting now.

Brian's grin grows, revealing surprisingly pointy teeth, and he turns up the radio. "Is it bad that I love this song?"

"Louder!" Lily shrieks and Brian laughs, which is a beautiful sound and Freddie's a fucking goner, he can already tell.

"Yes, it's _terrible_!" Freddie tells him, having to raise his voice over the music.

Brian laughs again and turns it up further still, singing along though Freddie can't hear him over the bloody radio. He can hear Lily, though—she knows every word.

" _SHAKE IT OFF, OOH, OOH! SHAKE IT OFF_!"

Freddie can't help himself and he laughs, feeling somehow firmly a part of this, part of something _special_ , this little family shrieking along to Taylor Swift in a too-small car as they rattle along the road home. He laughs so hard he even forgets to cover his teeth.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Brian's house is exactly as much of a disaster as Freddie had prepared himself for, but it's also not as bad as he'd feared it would be. It's cluttered and there are things _everywhere_ , not just toys but piles of books, bits of cameras, and Freddie spies no less than three telescopes as he follows Brian to the kitchen, but it's _homely_. It feels comfortable, like it'll be warm in the winter and cosy with rain pouring down outside, the sort of house where you can curl up and watch a movie and drink hot chocolate and make homemade pizzas with your children if you could only find the baking tray.

Brian carries Emma in in her car seat, other hand leaden with shopping and Freddie dutifully follows him with more bags. The other children disappear as soon as they're inside, running in separate directions and neglecting to help with the shopping, which Freddie doesn't blame them for in the slightest; the bags are _heavy_.

He dumps them on the table and they make another trip to the car and back to fetch everything. Freddie tries to help unpack but he doesn't know where anything goes and can't reach the uppermost shelves of the cupboards anyway, so he ends up putting things in the fridge once he figures out the baby-latch and watching Brian do the rest.

He's surprisingly quick and efficient in the kitchen after the disaster he'd been in Waitrose, making short work of shoving everything into its rightful place and getting oil on to heat while Freddie stuffs the plastic bags inside each other to tidy them. Brian points him to the cupboard they're kept in and Freddie hides them away alongside the ironing board and mop bucket.

By the time he's turned back, Brian's fetched down two wine glasses and a bottle of red, offering it by way of lifting the bottle in Freddie's direction with a single arched eyebrow.

"Oh, go on, then." Freddie wanders closer to accept his glass and leans against the counter, looking around with interest. "Your house is lovely," he says, not because it's the polite thing to say but because he means it. It's a far cry from his own apartment in the city centre, which is cold and impersonal but in such a bloody convenient location that Freddie can't bear to leave it.

"Oh, thanks," Brian says with some surprise. "It's a bit of a mess, I'm afraid."

"I like it," Freddie declares. "It's _lived_ in."

Brian snorts. "Which is the polite way of saying it's messy," he teases. "I'd say it's because the kids have turned it upside down but I'd be lying, it's always been like this."

"I _did_ wonder what Lily could possibly have to do with a telescope four times the size of her. Yours, I assume?"

"Yeah, those are mine," Brian says, clattering around in a cupboard until he comes up with the pans he needs. "Can you pass me a chopping board? They're in that cupboard just there."

Freddie retrieves a board as requested and hands it over. "So you like space?" he surmises.

"Oh yeah. I teach astrophysics at the university—well, most days. Things are a bit up in the air at the moment, with…" He waves his hand toward Emma, asleep in her car seat on the table-top.

Freddie's dying to ask but doesn't quite dare, instead just sipping at his wine and figuring Brian will explain when and if he wants to.

"How good are you with a knife?" Brian asks.

"Oh, dear," Freddie says with a mock-groan. "I was rather hoping you wouldn't ask me that, darling. I'm hopeless in the kitchen." But he walks over and accepts the knife from Brian all the same, staring at the onions before him like they're poisonous or like to bite.

Brian gives such a loud laugh when he sees that it makes Freddie jump. "Haven't you ever cut an onion before?" he asks, and Freddie shamefully bites his lip. " _No_!" Brian gasps. "Never?"

"I told you!" Freddie protests. "I'm hopeless in the kitchen!"

"Oh my God," Brian laughs. "That _does_ make me feel a little better about having a meltdown in the middle of Waitrose."

"Well I'm glad to be of service," Freddie returns sarcastically.

"I'll show you, look." Brian steps up behind Freddie which makes his heart thump erratically—he's so bloody _tall_ and he smells fucking _delectable_ —then his hand is at Freddie's waist to gently push him aside and Freddie's heart nearly stops altogether.

Freddie goes easily, letting their elbows bump together as Brian takes the knife back and shows him how to cut the onion. His hands are big and sure and steady and Freddie zones out a bit watching him, struggling to keep his thoughts from straying toward inappropriate. He can still feel the warmth in his side from where Brian's hand touched him as though he never let go.

"See?" Brian says. He hands the knife back. "Now you have a go."

Freddie hasn't been paying attention _at all_ but it doesn't seem too hard, really, so he accepts the knife and eyes up his challenge as Brian moves away to carry on with something else, wine glass in hand.

He absolutely butchers the poor onion, cutting it into chunks that look nothing like Brian's fine little ones and within moments his eyes begin streaming, stinging badly. He tries to wipe them on his shoulder but it does nothing to help and he suddenly can't remember if he put kohl on his eyes that morning or not—oh _fuck_. Does he have black smeared down his face? There's no subtle way to check.

"Ah, Brian? Do you mind if I use your bathroom, darling?"

"Course not! There's one through that door on your left when you walk out—oh God, sorry Freddie, I didn't even think! Do you want some kitchen towel?" Brian asks quickly, liberating the knife from Freddie and noting his watering eyes.

"No, no," Freddie waves him off. "I'll be fine, I'll just pop to the loo."

He finds his way to the bathroom half-blind and shuts the door behind him, quickly washing his hands before dabbing his face dry with a bit of toilet paper. No eyeliner to speak of, thank fucking God, though he does look a bit red-eyed and watery now.

While he's in there he sends a quick text to Roger asking him to feed the cats because he won't be home until late.

Roger texts back immediately: **Who are you with??**

Freddie ignores it and slips his phone away. When he emerges from the bathroom he starts a bit to find Lily stood waiting for him, hands on her hips. "I knocked!" she says crossly. "You didn't say anything!"

"Oh, sorry, my dear!" Freddie says quickly. "I must not have heard you over the water. Are you alright?"

Lily nods. "Wait here!" She runs into the next room and returns a moment later, arms wrapped around an odd looking thing that Freddie realises, as it's waved in his face, is supposed to be a cat. "Isn't she beautiful?" Lily asks. "Stroke her!"

Freddie obediently reaches out to stroke the little toy's head, which is weirdly hard and scares the _shit_ out of him by moving when he touches it, a robotic little motion that makes it insanely _creepy_. Lily's eyes are big and round as she stares up at Freddie.

"Do you love her?" she asks seriously.

She clearly loves the thing herself so Freddie does the right thing. "I _adore_ her, sweetheart," he lies through his teeth. "She's just beautiful. What's her name?"

"Kitty," Lily tells him, hugging her close to her chest and planting a kiss on top of the synthetic fur. The little robot toy lets out a mechanical _meow_ and its head clicks as it moves.

Freddie is probably going to have nightmares.

By the time he returns to the kitchen, Brian has graciously neatened up Freddie's attempt at chopping the onions and must have added something to his pan of oil because it's sizzling and smells delicious.

Lily follows him in and Brian lifts her up so she can carefully put spaghetti into the pot of water he's got on the hob while Freddie hangs back and watches. He's in danger, here. He's known Brian for approximately three hours, barely spoken to him, and can already tell he's half in love with the man. And not just because of his looks, though he is beautiful. But because of the distracted way he laughs, the sweet kiss he puts on Lily's head before he sets her down, the quick, sure way his fingers unlatch Emma's car-seat straps when she squawks and the way he balances her on his hip while he stirs the pasta sauce.

The way he hums as he's working and the way his hand keeps finding its way onto Freddie, either to tap him on the shoulder and say, _Pass me that?_ or to gently move him out of the way when simply asking would do.

The dark intensity in his eyes when he approaches Freddie with a spoonful of the sauce he's cooked and a playful smile hanging around his mouth. "Tell me how it is, then," he says, holding it out.

Freddie doesn't hesitate even for a moment, he leans in and closes his mouth around the spoon, keeping dead eye contact. He's starting to think that Brian _isn't_ one hundred percent straight and that maybe he's not guilty of reading too much into this but he's trying _really_ hard not to get his hopes up.

They're standing close, Brian watching him carefully until Freddie swallows, at which point his eyes drop to his throat and never make it back up to his eyes, stopping at his mouth.

"How is it?" he asks.

"Darling, that's actually _gorgeous_ ," Freddie says, eyes going wide. It was all so simple when Brian was chucking it in the pan, barely a handful of ingredients, but it tastes like something he'd be charged four vodka tonics for at the local Italian.

Brian's eyelashes go all fluttery and bashful before he steps back, tossing the spoon across the kitchen so it lands in the sink. "No need to sound so surprised," he laughs, and the tension of the moment is diffused instantly, though some edge of it lingers in Freddie. Is this _going_ somewhere?

"Can you get me some plates out?" Brian asks, pointing Freddie to the right cupboard as he moves back to the hob and takes everything off the heat. "Jack! Lily! Can you wash your hands and come down for dinner please!" he calls as he strains pasta and stirs the sauce through it.

Lily enters first, setting Kitty on the table. "Where's Freddie sitting?"

"Wherever he wants to sit," Brian tells her, putting a plate of garlic bread in the middle of the table.

"Can he sit next to me?"

"Why don't you ask him?"

Freddie saves her the trouble, offering her a smile. "I'd love to sit next to you, darling—which is your seat?"

Lily points it out and Freddie pulls out the chair beside it just as Jack walks in. "Dad, Lily didn't wash her hands," he announces immediately.

"Lily, go and wash your hands, please," Brian says with the sort of routine intonation that suggests he's said this every night for the past he-doesn't-know-how-long.

Lily huffs and flounces out of the room while Jack hauls his own chair out, not so much as wincing at the hideous scrape of noise it makes on the kitchen floor, and Freddie can't help but bask just a little in the sweet chaos of it all.

Brian leans right over Freddie to put a plate in front of him and rests his hand on his shoulder for a moment, up so high that his thumb and index finger are past the point of his t-shirt and are pressed warmly against the bare skin of his neck. "Let me know if you need anything," Brian says before he lets go and takes his own seat opposite.

Thankfully Brian is then distracted with feeding Emma so Freddie has a moment to regain his senses, praying his face isn't as flushed as it feels.

The children mostly take charge at dinner, chattering away to both Freddie and their father, and Jack occasionally leans over to coo at Emma when she slams her hands down on her high-chair and confidently speaks gibberish at him.

"Daddy don't you want some garlic bread?" Lily asks, grabbing another slice for herself.

For a millisecond, Brian's eyes flash to Freddie's. "Not tonight, sweetheart, thank you."

Freddie has to take a hasty sip of wine to distract himself. His thoughts have immediately jumped to kissing and kissing _Brian_ and what that might be like and where it might take place and at the dinner table surrounded by his kids is _not_ the place to let those thoughts take over.

Thankfully, Lily soon demands Freddie's attention, informing him that he's swirling his spaghetti wrong and to watch _her_ do it so he can see how it's done. As far as Freddie can tell, Lily's technique is identical to his own, but she's pleased when Freddie watches attentively and mimics the actions after, grinning up at him with a mouthful of pasta still.

It's slightly harder to focus on dinner or, in fact, anything else when Brian's foot knocks against his under the table and then stays there, his long leg stretched out into Freddie's space. Freddie doesn't dare look at him but lets his own leg relax against Brian's. It doesn't feel just flirty and playful, it feels _domestic_ , it feels normal and comfortable and like they've been dating for months.

It shouldn't be this easy. It's _never_ this easy. Freddie knows; he's been searching for this life for as long as he can remember, something small and quiet and perfect, something _loving_ , and it's not the sort of thing you can find on a Wednesday afternoon at Waitrose.

He doesn't stop it, though. Even though Freddie knows only too well that this can only end badly, because it's too _good_ , he indulges himself. He can deal with the tears later. For now, he wants this. He wants to play pretend for a little while, he wants Brian, and he's pretty fucking sure Brian wants him.

The kids disappear off to play after dinner and Brian puts Emma in her little walker to skate around the kitchen, bumping into cupboards and unsuspecting legs alike, while Freddie fills the sink with hot water.

"Freddie, sit down," Brian says at once. "You're my guest, I'm not letting you wash up."

"Well I'd rather like to be invited back, darling, so I thought I'd pull my weight," Freddie replies, surprising himself a little bit.

Brian pauses before a shy smile breaks across his face. "I'd invite you back either way."

Freddie feels warm and elated, a giddy rush of just _excitement_ that this is all going so _well_ , and he grins back.

"So sit _down_ , let me do that," Brian adds.

Freddie takes his hands out of the water, with no small amount of relief because he despises washing up and it always makes his hands dry and horrible. "I'll dry, then," he compromises. He doesn't really want to do that, either, but he _does_ want Brian to think nice things of him so he's willing to put the effort in. Roger would probably faint with shock if he saw Freddie willingly picking up a tea towel to help with kitchen chores, but Freddie does, standing side by side with Brian.

He really is shockingly tall; this close, Freddie has to tip his chin right up to talk to him. He'd probably have to lean into his toes to kiss him, or Brian would have to bend his head right down, and Freddie snaps his attention from Brian's face to the plate he's drying and sets it aside. Now's not the time. Is it?

Freddie carefully glances sideways, and meets Brian's eyes with a jolt that runs right through him. Brian's watching him.

With intent.

There's a long, drawn-out moment of _will-we?_ before there's a rush of water and Brian's hand comes out of the sink. He catches Freddie behind the neck in his wet palm and plants a chaste but deliberate kiss on his mouth.

Freddie turns his head up for it and doesn't even mind that sink water is dripping down the back of his shirt because Brian's lips are warm and soft and his hair tickles Freddie's cheek, and neither of them taste like garlic even when Brian's tongue finds its way into Freddie's mouth and touches against his.

Freddie drops his tea towel and wraps a fist in the front of Brian's shirt, blissfully oblivious to everything else in the world, when the sound of a child clattering down the stairs startles the both of them and they jump apart like guilty schoolchildren just as Jack runs in.

He doesn't notice that anything's amiss, waving a piece of paper and charging up to Brian while Freddie hastily grabs the towel and continues drying up.

"Dad!" Jack says loudly. "I had homework!"

"Oh, shit," Brian mutters, shaking his hands off and looking around.

Freddie offers him his tea towel and Brian dries his hands while it's still hooked on Freddie's finger, catching his eyes before he turns to the kitchen table.

"What homework is it?"

"Times tables," Jack says, pulling out a chair.

"Oh, well we can do those!" Brian says with audible relief. "At least it's not an art project or something."

Freddie huffs out a laugh. "I've never known anyone to prefer times tables over an art project," he says, leaning his hip against the counter so he can turn and see Brian.

"Dad loves maths," Jack informs Freddie, pulling a face.

"You do, too," Brian says, gently poking him in the shoulder.

Freddie carries on with the drying up while Brian helps Jack through his eight times table behind him, then finishes washing up the dishes Brian hadn't gotten to while Brian makes a bottle for Emma and carries her upstairs to put her down, calling out to his other children that it's their ten minute warning before stories and bed.

By the time he returns, after having to come back downstairs to fetch Lily, who escaped to give Freddie a hug and say goodnight, and loudly having to wrangle Jack into his pyjamas, followed by another trek downstairs to find the new toothpastes they'd bought earlier, Freddie has wandered through most of the downstairs, having a nosy.

He's in the study when Brian finds him, staring wide-eyed at the papers on Brian's desk, which may as well be written in another language for all Freddie can understand them.

"Sorry about that," Brian says from the doorway. "I'm still trying to work out the whole bedtime routine." He walks into the study and comes over to see what Freddie's looking at while Freddie plucks up some courage.

"I...take it you haven't had them very long?" he asks eventually.

Brian shakes his head, straightening some of the papers. "Two months, nearly. Their mother got sick, she passed away in March."

Freddie claps a hand to his mouth. "Oh, fuck, I'm so sorry, darling!" And to think he'd just kissed him in the kitchen! _Christ_.

"No, no," Brian says quickly. "It's okay, well—it's not okay," he amends. "We weren't together any more. Hadn't been together for a while, actually. Long before Emma was born. We were sort of on-again, off-again. I'd, uh...I met someone else," Brian admits without quite looking at Freddie. "We thought we could work things out...didn't." Brian shrugs. "We made each other unhappy."

Freddie doesn't know what to say to that so he just stands there dumbly, feeling a deep, aching swell of sympathy for the children upstairs and the man before him.

"Sorry, I've brought the mood down," Brian apologises gently.

"Don't be silly—I asked, didn't I?" Freddie says. "Thank you for telling me. Your children are just wonderful, you know."

Brian lights up a bit at that. "They are, aren't they? Sometimes I feel like I'm just stumbling in the dark with them, just fucking up over and over, but they're good kids. I'd do anything for them."

"They love you a lot," Freddie tells him. He might not know any of them very well but that much is obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes or ears.

"Lily loves _you_ ," Brian replies with a fond smile. "I think you may have found a friend for life in her."

"I'd be glad to call her that," Freddie says with confidence. "As long as she doesn't have the same terrible taste in school subjects as her father. Who likes _maths_?"

Brian laughs. "I'm an astrophysicist, maths is part of the package."

Freddie's eyebrows jump upward. "You're a _what_? That sounds terribly brainy and intimidating."

"It's not intimidating," Brian says.

"It is to an artist."

"An artist! I knew it. See, us astrophysicists are the nerds the cool ones like you avoided like the plague in school."

"I was _not_ very cool in school," Freddie corrects, continuing the meander of the study he'd been on when Brian first arrived. "A fag with these teeth? I didn't stand a chance." There's a framed doctorate on the wall. _Dr Brian May_. Well, well.

"I like your teeth," Brian says, sounding offended on young-Freddie's behalf.

Freddie snorts. "Darling, please."

"I do." Brian crosses the room suddenly in two long strides and without a moment's hesitation, picks right back up where they left off in the kitchen, with such heat and certainty that Freddie's left breathless in seconds.

Without breaking the kiss, he walks Freddie backward across the room until he has him perched on the edge of his desk and can step between his legs, both hands cupped around his face to deepen their kiss.

Freddie presses his knees into the sides of Brian's hips and grips his shoulders, tipping his head back as Brian's stubble scrapes over his jaw, his mouth leaving tiny red little nip-marks along his neck. It's getting Freddie hard and Brian's hands haven't even gone anywhere near his cock, he's so fucking screwed, even more when Brian pauses and presses his forehead to Freddie's, catching his breath.

"I want to take you to bed," Brian says without preamble.

Freddie nods vehemently and kisses him again.

Brian laughs and lets him for a few seconds before he breaks away again.

"The kids won't be asleep yet," he says regretfully. "Can you wait an hour?"

Freddie groans. "I'd have an easier time reading this, darling," he says, one hand rooting around behind him to indicate the paper he'd seen earlier, covered in complicated red Biro squiggles and wordy notes.

Brian laughs again and kisses him a few more times, like he just can't help himself, before he manages to step away.

Freddie's pleased to note, from the bulge in his jeans, that he's equally as affected. So at least it will be a joint torture. He slides off the desk and clears his throat, re-adjusting himself a bit so he can walk comfortably.

Brian links their fingers together and tugs him from the study, through to the living room where he pulls Freddie down onto the sofa with him and fishes around between the cushions for the remote.

Freddie isn't sure what exactly is acceptable here—they're not an _item_ , they haven't even slept together yet, what's he supposed to _do_?—but thankfully Brian solves that for him by throwing an arm around him and pulling him close while he scrolls through channels.

"Is there anything you want to watch?" Brian offers.

"You can choose." Freddie has to shift a bit because Brian's bony hip is digging into him but once he settles, he barely dares to breathe. This really is too good, too perfect. Freddie can't remember the last time someone cuddled him without sex first, can't think if he's _ever_ had that, skipped straight to this tender part without putting out to get it.

If it wasn't for the lingering memory of the kiss and the erection that definitely isn't going to go away while he's led against Brian like this, Freddie thinks he could fall asleep quite easily. He's very much in danger of falling in love.

Brian finds, of all things, a nature documentary to put on and Freddie watches it without focusing while Brian's thumb strokes idly back and forth along his neck. Even just that gets him so keyed up that Freddie ends up achingly hard in his jeans and desperately wondering what the fuck the time is.

Even watching an antelope get brutally ripped apart on-screen doesn't get rid of it, though Freddie does press his hand to his mouth in horror. "That's awful! Why are we watching this?"

"No idea," Brian says distractedly. His thumb stops its motion and Freddie feels bereft until Brian leans over him, using his weight to push him to lie back on the sofa, and starts up kissing him again.

Freddie can't help but groan quietly and press up against him, trying to plead with the evidence of how desperately he wants this for Brian to _do something about it_.

They kiss as the documentary finishes in the background, rolling their hips together and grinding until the both of them are gasping and completely past the point of no return.

"Let's go upstairs." Brian gets to his feet but Freddie doesn't follow, not sure he's able to do anything with the way all his limbs have turned to jelly.

"Let's just fuck here," he suggests. "With the TV _off_."

"Condoms are upstairs," Brian says simply, pulling him up and giving his ass a tiny swat to get him to move, which sends such an intense wave of heat through Freddie that he nearly stumbles.

How they make it upstairs he doesn't know, but Brian locks the door and pushes him down onto the bed with just as much desperation as Freddie feels. He wastes no time at all in getting Freddie's jeans off, tossing them aside and throwing his boxers in the same direction, wrapping one big hand around Freddie's cock while Freddie's hips strain and he tries to bite down on his moan of pleasure.

"If you do that too much this is going to be over _very_ quickly, darling," Freddie gasps quickly.

Brian lets go at once, bracing his body over Freddie and taking up kissing him again while Freddie wrestles blindly with Brian's zipper. He manages to get his jeans open and pushed down his thighs enough to get at his cock, which Freddie can't see but can feel is fucking _huge_ when he closes his hand around it.

"Fucking hell, darling, how have you kept _this_ hidden all night?" he asks breathlessly, more aroused than he can remember being in a long time.

Brian doesn't reply, too busy sucking a hickey into Freddie's neck and grinding into his fist to even bother attempting to speak. Once he's apparently satisfied at what he's done to Freddie's throat he kisses him again, messy and hungry, knocking his alarm clock over as he fumbles around his bedside table to get the drawer open.

"Which way do you prefer?" Brian breaks the kiss long enough to ask. He's managed to find a bottle of lube and a condom packet which he chucks on the pillow beside Freddie's head for now.

"Fuck me, darling," Freddie says immediately. He _needs_ to feel that monster of a cock inside him.

Brian doesn't need telling twice. He liberally coats his fingers and dips his hand between Freddie's thighs, starting to press inside with his index finger while Freddie's shoulders strain trying to reach him for another kiss.

Taking the hint, Brian leans back down and re-captures his mouth. He's probably going to give Freddie beard rash with how messy he's being, he'd better shave in the morning, but he can't bring himself to stop just now, feels like he might die if he takes his tongue from Freddie's mouth for a single fucking second.

Freddie's tight but he's clearly used to this; he doesn't flinch or balk at all while Brian works his finger the whole way in, steadily opening him up enough to slide a second in as well, feeling around for—

" _Fuck_ , Brian!"

Brian laughs into his mouth, pleased, and presses that spot again, rubbing hard as Freddie squirms beneath him, breathless and sweating.

"Fuck me, just fuck me, darling, enough of that, _please_!"

"Hold on," Brian says quickly. He slowly eases his fingers apart, giving himself some room, and wriggles a third finger into place, making sure Freddie's going to be able to take his cock without doing himself an injury.

He can't help from teasing at Freddie's prostate some more, just to hear the catch in his breath and feel the way he clenches around him, moaning quietly. " _Please_ , Brian, don't make me wait any longer!"

"Okay, okay." Brian removes his fingers and Freddie lets out a shuddery groan of displeasure, demandingly squeezing his legs around Brian's hips.

"Come _on_!"

"I'm _trying_!" Brian laughs as he kneels up, grabbing the condom and ripping the wrapper off. He rolls it on and settles back between Freddie's legs, taking hold of himself to guide the tip toward Freddie's opening before he sinks in.

It's one long, smooth motion and Freddie arches his back as Brian bottoms out, tipping his head right back and biting hard on his lip. He grabs Brian's arm with one hand, fingernails digging in, and gasps for breath.

" _Fuck_ , you're enormous! Give me a second, darling," Freddie requests breathlessly, consciously trying to relax around the fucking giant intrusion, letting his legs go a bit loose.

"Are you alright?" Brian checks, trying not to be too smug with Freddie's reaction.

Freddie nods silently, keeping still until the discomfort slowly crests into something else. "Okay," he murmurs, "you can move now."

Brian smiles and kisses him softly, over and over again while he eases out and slowly presses back in. He keeps the pace gentle for the first few thrusts, letting Freddie fully adjust to him, until Freddie's heels press insistently against his ass.

"I'm not going to break," he says crossly.

"That's good to hear," Brian says, and roughly snaps his hips forward. He snakes his fingers through Freddie's hair and holds on, doesn't pull but deliberately keeps Freddie's head still as he begins rocking his hips hard and fast.

"Oh fuck, _yes_ , darling!" Freddie's mouth is open, eyes closed as he just enjoys the ride, half-returning Brian's kisses and half moaning, his nails scraping down Brian's back during a handful of particularly violent thrusts that nearly have him crying out.

Freddie presses his fist to his mouth so he can let out a shaky whine, pressing his palm flat against his mouth a moment later when Brian takes hold of his hips and angles him differently, pulling Freddie into him as he thrusts, struggling to keep quiet himself.

"God, you feel so fucking good," Brian says hoarsely, wishing they'd taken enough time beforehand to strip fully naked because being denied all that skin right now is torture. He's still got his own fucking jeans on, they did not think this through.

Brian can feel himself getting close, heat uncurling in his stomach, his balls hot and heavy with the need to let go, and he releases Freddie's hips to start stroking him.

"Come on, baby," he mutters breathlessly, his hand tight and quick around Freddie's cock. "I wanna see you come, do it for me, come on."

"God, fucking _hell_ , Brian!" Freddie lets out, hips stuttering as his orgasm rushes through him and he spills all over Brian's fist with a muted cry.

Seeing him sends Brian over the edge and he bites his lip hard to keep himself quiet, forcing himself through a final few thrusts to drag it out until he can't stand it any more and has to stop. He wishes he could stay firmly thrust inside Freddie for a little longer but he hates the way the condom feels once he's come so he pulls out and gets rid of it, tying it off and dropping it over the side of the bed to be dealt with later. He kicks off his jeans while he's at it, stripping his shirt off and throwing it somewhere in the direction of his laundry hamper.

Brian takes the opportunity while Freddie's recovering to kiss him lazily, rolling them both to the side and pulling Freddie with him, tangling their legs together. He gets both hands under Freddie's t-shirt and works it off him, discarding it and pulling Freddie close once he's naked, relishing the closeness now that there are no barriers between them.

Contented sleep is stealing over him and he wraps his arm tightly around Freddie's waist, dreading feeling the mattress dip as he rolls away and leaves Brian's life for good. "Will you stay the night?" he asks lowly, pressing a new kiss to Freddie's forehead, and one to his cheekbone, the edge of his moustache, the tip of his nose.

Freddie hums something that sounds like agreement, already half-asleep, and gives a tired smile. Brian kisses that as well.

Freddie's woken once in the night by the sound of Emma crying through the baby monitor and Brian hastily slipping out of bed to go and deal with her, but just barely. By the time he's blearily opened his eyes, realising that he's in bed alone, Brian's sliding back beneath the covers, pulling Freddie back against his chest like they've been doing this for years.

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning Freddie wakes up with a sudden jolt and his sleep-addled brain takes a moment to realise why such pleasure is flooding through him. 

His hips jerk and Freddie lets out a gasp because he can’t see Brian but oh, fuck, he can feel him, his mouth closed hot and wet around Freddie’s cock beneath the sheets.

“Christ!” Freddie says, throwing the covers off to reveal one very curly head bent between his thighs and a sly smirk from around his cock.“Well good morning to _you_!”

Brian doesn’t stop to return the greeting and Freddie lets his head fall back against the pillows, closing his eyes again though sleep is suddenly the last thing on his mind.He has no idea what time it is but the sun’s up, light flooding through the curtains they never closed last night and bathing the room in a warm glow.

Freddie doesn’t think he’s ever felt so content in his life, just lazy and happy with it, heat pulsing through him as Brian does a very expert job on him, the perfect amount of tongue and hand and just plain sucking until Freddie’s fists have gone tight in the sheet, pulling it off the corners of the mattress and making a mess of the bedding as he’s edged toward the finish. 

“Fuck, Brian, I’m going to come in a second, darling,” Freddie warns him quickly, his thighs tense and aching with resisting the urge to close them.

Brian doesn’t pull away, apparently set to stay right where he is for the finale and Freddie strains not to buck his hips into his mouth.

“Brian,” he says again.  “Bri— _aah_.”  His second warnings aren’t too helpful because Brian does _something_ with his tongue that drives Freddie mad and he can’t help pushing his hips up as he comes, shuddering with it and loudly gasping for breath, not entirely sure he isn’t still dreaming.  

Brian eventually pulls off, wiping his mouth on the loose sheet Freddie’s dislodged, and crawls up the bed to kiss him.“Good morning,” he says finally. 

“Morning, darling,” Freddie greets him breathlessly, flushed and grinning.“Do you want me to…?”He reaches down between Brian’s legs but Brian shakes his head, pulling his hips back.

“No time,” he says.“I need to do the kids’ breakfast before school.”He leans down to kiss him again.“I like hearing you say my name like that,” Brian adds, his voice low and so sexy Freddie’s cock gives a valiant twitch just hearing it. 

“I like saying it,” Freddie admits shyly. 

Brian grins at him, wide and easy, and kisses him one last time before rolling off the bed.“How do you take your tea?I’ll bring it up here, if Lily sees you I’ll never get her to school.”

“Do you have Earl Grey?”

Brian nods, hunting around the room for a clean pair of boxers and hopping around to get his ridiculously long legs into them. 

Freddie watches, horrified to discover just how _fond_ he is watching this remarkably _un_ sexy dance.  “That, then, if you would, darling.  With milk and two sugars.”

“Got it.”Brian grabs a dressing gown from the back of the door and disappears, though not before blowing a quick kiss to Freddie.

Freddie flops back onto the bed once the door is closed, shaking his head at himself.“You are so fucked,” he mutters quietly. 

He dozes a little bit as he half-listens to the sounds from the house around him, tiny footsteps hammering along the hallway outside, occasional cries from Emma, the kettle boiling downstairs, fridge opening and closing.‘ _Dad, where are my trousers_?’ and ‘ _Daddy!I can’t find Kitty!_ ’ that wash over Freddie and make him feel oddly safe, and all the more fond of Brian. 

It takes ages for him to return with tea, while the kids are in the bathroom brushing their teeth.  He has Emma on his hip and he’s dressed and clean-shaven as he sits on the edge of the bed and hands a cup over.

Freddie quickly checks that he’s all covered, not wanting to scar the child for life, and gratefully accepts the tea.

“Will you stay for a while?” Brian asks carefully.“I have to drop them at school, what time do you need to be at work?”

Freddie shakes his head.“No specific time,” he says happily.“I can stay for a bit.”

Brian beams at him.“I’ll drive you.I don’t have lectures today, I’ve got this one.”He jiggles Emma a bit and she laughs and clings onto his hair. 

“That sounds wonderful.”It really does.Freddie’s so scared for what’s going to happen when this goes tits-up but he’s too far into it now to try and do any damage control.He may as well enjoy the ride while it lasts. 

Brian leaves him with another shy, pleased smile and closes the door so he can hustle the kids downstairs and into their shoes.

Freddie sits up against the headboard and sips his tea while the commotion downstairs slowly calms and the front door opens, three pairs of footsteps filing out.  Then the door slams shut and a few moments later, the car engine starts up and they’re away.  Freddie’s alone, but he doesn’t feel it, not in this house that feels so lived in.  Not knowing that Brian’s going to be back soon.

He slowly finishes his tea and gets out of bed right after; he has no idea how far away the school is so he doesn’t know how long Brian will be but he wants to be showered and decent by the time he returns. 

He finds a clean towel hung up on the back of Brian’s door and steals it, creeping his way down the hall, irrationally nervous that a forgotten child might pop around the corner and get an eyeful until he locks himself in the bathroom.

There, Freddie can’t be rushed.He finds a new toothbrush still in its packet under the sink and brushes his teeth for ages, trying to make up for the night before, then spends he doesn’t know how long luxuriating under the hot spray.The water pressure in his flat is atrocious so even though Brian’s is nothing special, it feels heavenly compared to what Freddie’s used to. 

He takes his time washing himself all over, getting rid of the dried come from last night and this morning and helping himself to Brian’s shampoo, which smells fucking delightful. 

By the time he’s finished he’s feeling fresh as a daisy, though that is somewhat dampened when he returns to the bedroom and sees the crumpled mess of his clothes scattered about.He doesn’t fancy putting them back on and steals underwear from Brian, which is a bit big but it’ll do in a pinch.

Brian’s jeans are a no-go; Freddie does try but he looks like a fucking child with how much he has to roll the ankles up so he tugs his own jeans back on, grateful that he shed them completely last night so they’re not covered in anything.His t-shirt is in no state to be worn again without being washed so Freddie has to steal one of Brian’s but thankfully it doesn’t look as ridiculous as the jeans.It’s too long but that’s what all the kids are wearing, these days.It’s totally fashionable.

Freddie grabs his cup from the bedside table and makes his way downstairs, thinking that he might act the perfect little housewife and wash up Brian’s breakfast things, when someone knocks on the door.

Stupidly, Freddie simply assumes it’s Brian. _Why_ Brian would knock on his own door, he doesn’t know—he doesn’t even think about it.Just opens the front door excited to see him again and is stunned into shocked silence when he sees an older woman there instead, the resemblance so clear that this can only be one person.Brian May’s mother.

Freddie feels his lungs turn to steel and chokes in surprise, which is reflected back at him in equal measure.There’s no way of spinning this; when it’s eight in the morning and a barefoot and freshly-showered man opens the door wearing your son’s clothes and several very telling hickies, there’s only one real conclusion to draw, which is the truth. 

“Good morning, my dear,” Freddie says, a few beats too late.  “I’m so sorry, I’m afraid Brian’s not here at the minute.  He’s doing the school-run.”

“Ah, I’m a little late, then,” she replies, recovering swiftly from the shock of seeing Freddie.“I’m Ruth, by the way,” she adds, offering a hand.

Freddie takes it.  “Freddie,” he tells her, something in him curling up and dying while the rest of him pulls on its best host uniform.  “Would you like to come in?  I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

“I think I will,” Ruth says, stepping over the threshold as Freddie backs up to make room.  She closes the door behind her and makes her way straight to the kitchen.  Freddie considers fleeing out the front door so as not to have to deal with this but he doesn’t know where his damned shoes are.

“You may as well come in here, love,” Ruth calls out, as though sensing his indecision.“I won’t bite, you know.And I know all about Brian, you needn’t worry.”

Freddie shuffles out into the kitchen and is met, to his surprise, by a warm smile so like Brian’s that it’s almost unnerving.“You, uh...know about him?”

“Yes, I know,” Ruth says.“It could hardly be kept a bloody secret when he did that marriage of his in over it, could it?”

Freddie’s not one hundred percent sure what she means so he keeps quiet.

“He did tell you, I assume?About his marriage?”Ruth is busily getting the kettle on, pulling down cups and teabags with the confidence of someone who’s been here a lot, doing this a lot.

“Sort of,” Freddie replies.  “I know they broke up.”

Ruth nods.“Mmm, because he decided he liked them a little more like _you_ than like her.”

_Ah_. 

“Oh, he has milk,” Ruth comments with no small amount of surprise as she opens the fridge.“Well, I’ll be damned.Bread, too,” she adds when she looks around.“Has he been _shopping_?”

Freddie nods, because that he _does_ know.  “Yes, yesterday,” he tells her, glad to be able to offer _something_.  

“My goodness.How do you take your tea, dear?”

Freddie tells her and sits at the kitchen table with her once it’s made, cupping his hands around the mug and feeling terribly awkward.  

“So, Freddie,” Ruth says with sudden relish.“How long have you two been seeing each other, then?Brian never tells me _anything_ , you know.”

Freddie opens his mouth, to tell her _what_ , he doesn’t know—he doesn’t very well feel like he can say they met _yesterday_ and now he’s here for breakfast having clearly spent the night—but Brian gallantly saves him by walking into the trap himself.

“Freddie?” he calls out as he opens the door.“Are you still here?”He sounds hopeful and it warms Freddie through.

“I’m in the kitchen,” he says.  

“As am I, dear,” Ruth adds.

Brian appears very suddenly in the doorway with Emma in his arms and a distinct deer-in-headlights look, eyes jumping between Freddie and his mother for a few silent moments.“Mum,” he says eventually, swooping down to deliver her a kiss on the cheek.“I didn’t know you were coming over this morning.”

“Yes, well, I thought after I couldn’t make it yesterday I’d pop in,” Ruth says, holding her hands out for Emma.“Let Granny have a cuddle, then.I’ve just been chatting to Freddie, here.He says you went _shopping_.”

Brian rolls his eyes as he sets about making himself a cup of tea.“I’m not an invalid, Mum, I can do some shopping.”

Freddie arches his eyebrows at him and Brian sends him a _shush_ sort of look which makes Freddie grin down into his cup. 

“Freddie did help, though,” Brian does add, returning to the table cup-in-hand and taking the seat next to Freddie.He gives his knee a fond bump under the table with his own.“The kids now have their own toothpastes.Jack brushed his teeth three times last night before I could get him into bed.”

“Oh, that’s just wonderful,” Ruth says, looking between the two of them with big, pleased eyes that have the slightest hint of a shine to them.“I’m so happy to see you looking so well, Brian, darling.”

Brian bashfully ducks his head and takes a sip of his tea while Freddie wonders at just how much of a mess he must’ve been lately.And silently congratulates himself for being the world’s fucking _best_ lay because it’s apparently taken one night for Brian to start looking a bit better.If Freddie has his way Brian’ll be turning bloody cartwheels soon.

“You must be good for him, Freddie, love,” Ruth carries on, and Freddie blushes madly and prays she never finds out that they met _yesterday_.  “I’ve been so worried about him and the children since...well, you know.”

“Mum.”

“I’m just _saying_ , dear.  It soothes my old heart to know that you have someone looking after you a bit, God knows he can barely look after himself,” Ruth says, leaning conspiratorially toward Freddie though she doesn’t bother lowering her voice.

“ _Mum!_ ”

Freddie gives a light laugh and wishes his face would cool down a bit.“Well, he’s in safe hands,” he says, because he can’t think of what else to say, and because he hopes it’s true.He hopes this doesn’t fizzle out in a week, or even less.He hopes that he might see Ruth again, maybe have dinner again at this table, might spend another night washing up side-by-side with Brian at that very sink. 

He wishes his heart and imagination wouldn’t run away with him so much but he can’t _help_ it and he _always_ does this, builds up a fantasy in his head moments after he’s met someone only to have it all come crumbling down around him when he wakes up alone in the morning or finds out they’re seeing someone else or gets told he’s just too _much_ and it’s not going to work. 

Ruth reaches over the table and gives Freddie’s hand a gentle squeeze.“You’re a sweet one, I like you,” she tells him.

Brian buries his face in his hands.“Mum, please.You’re going to scare him off.”

“Oh, nonsense!If the state of this house hasn’t scared him off, I’m certainly not going to.”

Freddie gives a gentle snort at that. 

“The house is fine!” Brian protests.“All the washing up’s even done.”

“It is,” Ruth agrees.

“So is there something you wanted or were you just visiting?” Brian asks casually.“I need to drop Freddie at work, so…”

“Well, like I said, I thought I’d pop in to see if you needed anything, I thought I’d get the shop but you’ve already done that,” she says.“I’ll leave you two to it, shall I?Why don’t I have Emma for the morning?” Ruth suggests suddenly, gently bouncing Emma on her knee. 

“Oh, Mum, you don’t have to—”

“Brian, please.Let me help, you know I love having her round,” Ruth cuts him off.

Freddie can’t help but feel that she’s engineering a way to get the two of them to spend some more time alone but it so happens that that’s exactly what he wants as well, so he can’t complain. 

“Well, if you don’t mind,” Brian relents, very easily.“I’ll come and get her this afternoon?”

“Just drop in whenever you’re free,” Ruth tells him.“Can you just put her seat in my car?”

“Course.”  Brian drains his tea and gets up, leaving Freddie alone in the kitchen with his mother.

“You’ll have to come to dinner, Freddie,” Ruth says as soon as Brian’s out of earshot.  “We do a roast on a Sunday, Brian usually comes over with the children.  I’d just love it if you could come along, he _never_ lets us meet anyone.  I know he thinks his father will react badly but he’s not the man he used to be, you know, and he loves Brian and those children so much.”

Freddie is silent for a moment, stomach squeezing with immediate anxiety at the thought.  He assumes, from that, that Brian’s father isn’t the most accepting and he can’t face that, he just can’t.  “I’d love to,” he fibs politely.  “I’ll have to let Brian know when I have a Sunday free.”

Ruth beams.  “Wonderful!” 

“What’s wonderful?” Brian asks, returning.

“Freddie’s agreed to come to Sunday dinner!” Ruth tells him happily, standing up ready to leave.  

Brian stills.  “Mum,” he says lowly.  “You know—”

“Oh hush, Brian, he’ll be fine.Now, I’m going to get going.I’ll see you later, darling,” she says, turning her cheek to Brian so he’ll bend down to give her a kiss goodbye, bending further still to give Emma one as well.“And it was lovely meeting you, Freddie,” Ruth tells him, kissing his cheek without too much hassle as Freddie’s not a lot taller than her.

Brian walks her out and waves her off as her car pulls away, then lets out a loud sigh of relief as he shuts the front door.

Freddie hovers in the kitchen doorway until Brian turns around and sees him.  

“I’m so sorry,” he says immediately.“I had no idea she’d come round, she usually pops in on a Wednesday but she couldn’t yesterday, her friend had a hospital appointment, I never dreamt she’d—”

“Brian,” Freddie cuts him off, sensing that this could get long-winded.  He closes the distance between them and hesitantly reaches out to wrap his arms around Brian’s waist.  “It’s fine.  She was lovely, darling.”

To his relief, Brian’s arms immediately go around him in return and he tugs him even closer.“She worries about me far too much,” he mumbles into Freddie’s hair.“But…” his voice takes on a sly tone.“She _has_ given us a bit of alone time.What time do you need to be at work?”

Freddie is instantly on board.“Not yet,” he says, kissing Brian as though he’s been starving for him and shoving his hand into the front of his jeans.“Why don’t I pay you back for this morning?”

“That,” Brian says, hoisting Freddie up so he can carry him into the living room, “is a _wonderful_ idea.”

 

 

***

 

 

It’s later than either of them intended by the time they admit that they’re too fucked-out to carry on.Freddie’s aching in that perfect, post-sex way and feels like he’s walking (limping, rather) on a cloud as he walks out to Brian’s car at nearly lunchtime.

Brian, who has a hell of a spring in his step, slides into the driver’s seat beside him and puts his sunglasses on again. 

“God, darling,” Freddie says.“You have no idea what that does to me.”

“These?” Brian asks with a grin, turning to him.“Because you can’t see my tired eyes, you mean?”

“Don’t do that,” Freddie says, smacking his knee.“I _mean_ because you look sexy.”

Brian laughs and starts up the car, then pauses.“Where should I take you?”

Freddie thinks about it.  He doesn’t have anything in particular to get _done_ today; he might spend some time in the studio later but he doesn’t have any deadlines currently, nor any pet projects he feels the usual itch to work on.  His focus has mainly been on his upcoming exhibition but all of his paintings are ready for it.

“Art gallery?” he suggests.He may as well stop in and he secretly hopes that Brian might come in with him; Freddie can’t think of a more perfect afternoon than wandering through the museum together.

“Work or play?” Brian asks, putting the car in gear and driving away all the same.

Freddie grins.“It’s _art_.”For him it’s both. 

“I never _get_ art,” Brian admits conversationally.“I don’t think I have the brain for it.”

“Too many numbers,” Freddie suggests wisely.“Everyone _gets_ art, you just have to find the _right_ art.Some art is fucking awful and unfortunately it usually gets stuck up in museums for people to gawk over.”

Brian snorts.“Are you supposed to be giving me the secrets of your trade like this?”

“ _My_ trade isn’t in awful art,” Freddie points out indignantly. 

“What is it you do, then?” Brian asks interestedly.“Wait, let me guess!Painter.”

Freddie snorts.  “Obviously.  You don’t get points for that,” he says, wagging a finger.

“Shame,” Brian says.  “What exactly do these points buy me, and how do I earn them?” he asks playfully, taking his eyes off the road for a second to flash Freddie a grin that sends heat shooting right through him despite the energetic morning they just spent.  How he can still feel even remotely aroused he has no idea but he does.  God help him, he does.  

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll find out, darling,” Freddie says with a pleased smirk.  “What do you think I paint?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Brian says at once.  “You’re one of those modern painters who does a little red square or something and calls it Anger and puts it up in an empty room.”

Freddie gasps, truly offended for a moment before he turns to set Brian straight and realises he’s being teased.  “ _No_ points for that!” he cries, though he can’t help but laugh.  “I _hate_ those exhibits.  If you don’t have any talent then by God, find something else to do!”

Brian lets out a low whistle.  “Big words,” he says.  “I’m expecting great things from _your_ paintings, Mr Mercury.”

“And what makes you think I’m going to show them to you?” Freddie asks, as though after the last day there’s anything in the world he’d deny this man.  He’s fucking hopeless, truly _hopeless_ , but he does love losing himself in the newness of someone like this, the little games of back-and-forth, the careful flirting.  He loves it now and tries not to think about how it always ends.  

“You don’t have to,” Brian allows, “but unless I see any, I can only assume they’re little red boxes…”

Freddie purses his lips so he won’t smile and shakes his head.  It’s so fucking _easy_ with Brian, like he’s known him for years.  Freddie has to keep catching himself so he won’t be too clingy and too much, wary of ruining this the way he’s ruined so many before.  

When they get to the gallery Freddie directs Brian around to the back, where the staff and artists-in-residence can park for free, and digs his pass out of his jeans to throw it in the dash in case a parking official comes around.  “Lucky I wore my own jeans,” he says as they clamber out, grinning over the car roof at Brian.  “I nearly stole yours this morning.”

Brian pauses suddenly at that and his cheeks turn a little pink.  “If I’d seen that I don’t think we’d have left the house at _all_ ,” he says.  “Nice t-shirt, by the way.”  Brian had noticed _that_ the second he saw it this morning and could barely believe how attractive he found it, the way it’s too long for Freddie, past his hips, and makes him look like _his_.  It goes _very_ well with the dark pink love-bites he’d left just below Freddie’s jaw, if he does say so himself.  

Freddie grins and plucks the shirt.  “Thanks.”  He comes around the car and leans into Brian, lowering his voice.  “I borrowed your underwear, too.”

He skips off with a mischievous little smirk over his shoulder and Brian has to take several seconds to calm himself down before he can follow.

Thankfully his legs are a lot longer than Freddie’s and he catches up easily, reaching out to casually twine their hands together as he falls into step.  “Is this okay?” he checks.

Freddie gives his hand a little squeeze and looks nearly tearful for a moment, but it’s gone in a blink.  “More than.”

They walk through the art gallery hand-in-hand like they’ve been coming together for years, like they’re a couple who just _does this_.  Steals a Thursday morning alone when they can to wander around places like this, gets the giggles over an absurd sculpture that’s called ‘Wrath of Poseidon’ that Freddie says looks like a goose with arms.  Stands together in line at the coffee shop in the lobby, Freddie leaning into Brian’s side while he orders drinks for the both of them, in takeaway cups so they can continue meandering through the exhibits and displays.

Brian still doesn’t _get_ art but he’s pretty fucking sure he’s falling in love with Freddie, which is insane because he’s known him for a _day_ but there it is.  He walks through the museum with him and listens to him talk about paintings with awe, with envy, with disdain, and he doesn’t get it but he doesn’t have to.  It doesn’t matter.  

Freddie doesn’t make him feel stupid or left out when Brian stares dumbfounded at paintings that just make no sense to him.  In fact he confesses on several occasions that he hasn’t the foggiest what they’re supposed to be about, either.  “That’s the whole point, darling,” he says.  “Who cares what anyone else thinks.  If it doesn’t make you feel something, fuck it and find a better one.”

Brian gets caught up in front of a painting of dogs having a tea party, just frowning at it while Freddie’s across the room looking at a pencil sketch.  

“Look at this,” Brian says when Freddie wanders back over to him.  “I just don’t _get_ this.”

Freddie looks at it, too, and shrugs.  “If it was cats I’d love it.  I don’t think it’s meant to be saying anything, though, darling.”

“No, I don’t not _get_ it,” Brian says, though he doesn’t get that either.  “I mean...how the fuck are dogs meant to have a tea party?  They can’t hold teacups.  Look!  Even the artist doesn’t know—she’s painted all the cups just on the table.”

Freddie looks more closely and feels another wave of giggles coming on which he has to fight back.  Brian’s right, though; the dogs aren’t holding any teacups, which is a bit of a cheat, really.  

“How did this dog even tie her bonnet up?” Brian asks, incensed.  He points one long finger at a Jack Russell, deadly serious, and Freddie’s nose _hurts_ with the force of his snort of laughter.

“Maybe she has an owner?” Freddie manages to get out.  He can’t look at that fucking Jack Russell now, he’ll wet himself, he has to turn away.

“What sort of dog owner sets up a tea party for all their dogs and puts _hats_ on them?”

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to judge as I have seven cats,” Freddie confesses, tugging Brian away from the painting.

“That’s _different_ , they’re _cats_ ,” Brian replies, allowing himself to be pulled across the room.  “You don’t put clothes on them, do you?” he checks nervously, after a moment’s thought.

Freddie laughs.  “Of course not, they’d hate that!”

“Oh, thank God,” Brian says, grinning with over-exaggerated relief.  “Then you’re definitely allowed to judge.”

“Oh, thank God!” Freddie echoes.  “I’m _wonderful_ at judging.”  

They make their way back to the lobby and Freddie tries to ignore what he knows is true, which is that Brian’s going to have to leave soon and then the bliss of the past day is going to come crashing down around his ears.  

It comes long before he’s prepared for it.

“I have to get back and pick the kids up,” Brian says regretfully, stepping out into the sun with Freddie’s hand still safely ensconced in his own.  “They finish school soon.”

Freddie tries not to let the crushing disappointment show on his face.  “Lily would love that dog painting.”

Brian laughs lightly.  “Probably,” he agrees.  “That makes me almost glad I’m not rich enough to afford it.”

“I think it’d look great in the kitchen, actually,” Freddie teases.

“Well then thank God you’re not my interior decorator,” Brian replies, poking him gently in the chest.  

_I could be your something else_ , Freddie doesn’t say.

They stop when they reach the car and Brian sighs, which at least reassures Freddie he’s not the only one feeling their looming parting with dread.

“It feels obvious to say it but...I’ve had a really, really good time with you,” Brian says quietly, letting go of Freddie’s hand to wrap him in a hug instead.  

“Me too,” Freddie mumbles into his chest.  “Do you _have_ to go?”

He feels the rumble of Brian’s laughter and squeezes him tightly.

“It’s that or get my kids taken away for neglecting them,” Brian tells him.

Freddie pouts.  “Well then, if you _must_.  Say hi to them for me, will you?”

“Course.”  Brian pulls back a bit and fishes in his pocket for his phone.  “Will you put your number in?  Let me take you out for a proper dinner.”

Freddie’s been hanging onto the hope that this was coming and his heart leaps for joy.  “Of course, darling,” he says, happily adding himself to Brian’s contacts.  His own phone battery died in the night, probably as a result of Roger texting him non-stop asking for details after Freddie didn’t reply to the first one.  “Text me later so I can save yours,” he says, then hesitates.  “Ah, only if you want to, of course.”  _Don’t be so fucking clingy, for God sake._  

Brian grins at him and takes his phone back, slipping it in his back pocket as he crowds Freddie up against the door of the car.“I really, _really_ want to,” he says, dipping down for a kiss that quickly becomes a lot heavier than is strictly appropriate in broad daylight. 

Freddie fists both hands in Brian’s shirt and takes the moment for all it’s worth until they have to break to take a breath.

“Can I drop you somewhere?” Brian offers and Freddie shakes his head.

“I live just round the corner, it’s quicker to walk it,” he says, standing on his toes to give Brian one last kiss and praying, hard, that it _isn’t_ their last kiss.Just until next time. 

Brian drags himself away with difficulty and Freddie stands back as he gets in the car, hops up onto the curb to wave at him as he drives away, feeling for all the world like someone’s just reached into his chest and hollowed it out.Which is ridiculous, because he’s pretty confident Brian _will_ text him and they’ll see each other again.But being alone after being with him feels so much worse than being alone ever did before. 

He makes a morose picture as he walks home, head down, hands in his pockets. 

Even his cats don’t manage to cheer him up entirely, crowding around his feet the second he opens the door to the flat, meowing at him and fighting for attention.Freddie bends down and scoops up whoever’s nearest his hands, who happens to be Miko, and cuddles him to his chest.

“Oh, my darlings,” he says to them, shuffling his way inside, awkwardly trying to avoid stepping on any paws.  “Mummy’s missed you.”  _Mummy’s been out making what are probably very poor choices._

Freddie knew this would happen the moment he was alone but it happens faster than he thought it would; immediately, he’s convinced that that’s it.  He’ll never see Brian again, or if he does it’ll be in the street somewhere, holding hands with someone younger and more attractive than him, whispering together and kissing sweetly on a picturesque little bridge, or laughing and giving Jack a piggyback while Lily skips alongside them.

He drives himself nearly to tears while he waits an age for the kettle to boil and makes himself an Earl Grey, which he abandons halfway through for a vodka tonic instead. 

He plugs his phone in to charge and slumps dramatically on the sofa, at a loss for what to do with himself. 

Delilah jumps into his lap, purring, and Freddie runs his hand along her back, sniffing a bit.“You love me, don’t you, darling?”She flops across his thighs and promptly falls asleep, which Freddie is sure means _yes_.Unfortunately, love her as he might, she’s not quite boyfriend material. 

He sips at his glass and gazes forlornly up at the ceiling, wishing he’d at least written Brian’s number down so he could maybe text him in a week or so, just to check in.He hates having _nothing_ , knowing he just has to wait now for a message that might never come.He can’t count the number of times he’s been here before, convinced he’s on the verge of something special, only to have it yanked suddenly from around him.

Brian’s _different_ , Freddie’s had such a wonderful time with him, but he can’t shake the ever-present fear of being dumped and rejected all over again. 

It’s hardly worth all the heartbreak, really, but Freddie can’t help himself.

He nearly concusses Delilah, leaping up when his phone dings, and she struts off in a huff remarkably similar to her master’s.Freddie doesn’t even pause to apologise, too busy scrambling for his phone.

“Ugh, _Roger_!” Freddie growls at the empty flat.It’s his texts from last night, all finally popping in now he has battery and wifi.

_Ding!Ding!Ding!_ Freddie silences his phone and thumbs through the little balloons.

 

**Who are you with??**

 

**have you met someone?**

**Are you staying overnight?**

**How hot??**

 

**freddie!!**

 

**Fucking answer me**

**I hope u havent been murdered**

 

**Seriously though is he hot??**  
****

 

Then, from later that night:

 

**Must be**

 

**im locking the front door see you in the morning**

**Mazel Tov btw!** 🍆💦

 

And then from the morning:

 

**Omg did you stay the whole night????**

 

**I need to know everything!!**

**how was he?**

 

Freddie gets to the end, a little cheered by Roger’s enthusiasm and trying to tell himself that even if nothing comes of this, he’s had a night and a morning of fantastic sex and a wonderful wander around his favourite art gallery, which is more than anyone could ask of a Wednesday and a Thursday. 

**He was huuuge, darling** , Freddie types out his reply and hits send before going off to hunt for Delilah and give her an apology kiss for scaring her before. 

By the time he returns, with a new vodka tonic, Roger’s replied and—Freddie’s heart seizes.He has a text from an unknown number.

 

**Is it crazy if I miss you already? x**

 

Freddie lets out a shriek of happiness that frightens Delilah all over again, giddiness washing over him as he flops down onto the sofa, nearly exhausted with the force of his relief. 

Responding takes some serious thought.Freddie stares down at the little chat, wondering how to reply in a way that says, _Marry me and love me forever_ , but in a subtle, aloof, cool kind of way that leaves Brian wanting more and also marvelling at what a delightful boyfriend Freddie would make should someone fucking _have him_. 

Before he’s come up with the perfect reply, the three little dots that indicate that Brian is typing pop up and Freddie’s heart is in his throat.

 

**This is Brian, by the way...**

 

Oh fucking God, Freddie loves him _so much_. 

 

**I miss you too darling** , he types. **As soon as you drove away xx**

 

Freddie bites his lip and hunches over his phone, watching as the dots pop up instantly.

 

**Lily was devastated when you weren’t here when she came home but not half so much as I was xx**

 

Then, immediately after:

 

**When are you free for dinner?Is tomorrow night too soon? xxx**

 

Freddie immediately opens a separate chat and texts the people he was supposed to be seeing tomorrow night to cancel his plans.

 

**Tomorrow night sounds wonderful xxxx**

Brian sends a string of happy-faced emojis and Freddie feels like a _child_ with how excited he is to see the message flash up, and the ones after.

They’re up to sending an entire line of x’s at the end of each text by the time Roger comes home. 

“You,” he says as soon as he walks in the door and sees Freddie, “better tell me _everything_.”Being a good friend and even more of a gossip than Freddie is, he brings a bottle of wine and a beer straight to the living room with a glass for Freddie and immediately pulls out his phone to order food for delivery.

“So, I met him at Waitrose,” Freddie begins, happily settling in to divulge all.  

“Wait, wait—first thing’s first, what’s his name?” 

“Brian May,” Freddie tells him, pouring wine as Roger turns to his phone and starts typing.“What are you doing?Are you—”

“Oh, he _is_ attractive,” Roger says, eyebrows jumping in surprise as he looks down at the screen.  “Though that is a _lot_ of hair.”

“Have you _Facebooked_ him?” Freddie demands.  “Even I haven’t done that yet!”

“There’s not much on here, it’s mostly private,” Roger says, sipping from his beer before he coughs suddenly.“Uh, Fred, he has _kids_.”

Freddie nods.“I know, they were there.That’s how we met, actually—the middle one, Lily, got lost in Waitrose so I returned her to him and sort of helped with his shopping.”

Roger gives him a look at that.“ _You_ helped him with his shopping?Is the poor guy bankrupt now?”

“Oh, fuck off,” Freddie laughs.“Anyway, when we left he invited me to dinner at his house, so…”He smirks in a way that tells Roger _everything_ and takes an oh-so-casual sip of wine.

“You fucking dog,” Roger grins proudly.“He must’ve been good if you stayed all night.”

“ _So_ good,” Freddie agrees, sighing happily.“Biggest cock I’ve ever seen, Rog.” 

Roger snorts into his bottle.“So did you come back this morning?”

Freddie shakes his head.“I’ve been with him today as well,” he says.“We went to the art gallery and had a look around.We’re going out to dinner tomorrow night.”

That makes Roger pause.“Dinner?” he asks.“Is that a good idea?Fred, he has _kids_.That’s baggage, man.”

Freddie frowns at him.“ _You_ have kids!”

“And nobody I sleep with wants anything to do with them!” Roger retorts.“It’s hard.What about their mum?Does she even know he’s into guys?”

“She’s dead,” Freddie says, then winces at the bluntness of it.

“Oh, Christ.”Roger closes his eyes for a moment.“You sure know how to pick ‘em.This sounds like trouble, Fred.”

Freddie’s immediately defensive.“It’s _fine_ , Rog. _He’s_ fine.He wasn’t even with her when it happened, they split up ages ago.”

“Why’d they split up?”

“I think he cheated on her,” Freddie says with a little wince.

“Fucking _hell_ , Freddie!”

“But only because he liked men as well!” Freddie says quickly.“He’s so lovely, Rog, you don’t understand, and he was so _perfect_ with me, we had the best day today and we’ve been texting all evening until you got home.It sounds bad but it’s really not, he’s just wonderful, honestly.” 

Roger drinks some more beer so he doesn’t have to reply right away.“I just don’t want you to get hurt again, Freddie,” he says gently.He’s seen this happen before, dozens of times, and it always goes the same way.It always starts like this, a one night stand that Freddie thinks is going to blossom into something more, and an asshole who breaks his heart and leaves him crying on Roger’s shoulder at three in the morning, desperately wondering what’s wrong with him—his teeth, his hair, his height, his voice, his laugh.Freddie broken-hearted and tearing himself down for everything he can, trying to seek out something to fix because he won’t believe that these men are just fucking pricks and never deserved him anyway.

And those are the _good_ ones; others have been worse.A couple of them had even fucking _hit_ him. 

It breaks _Roger’s_ heart to witness the whole damn tragedy and he doesn’t see how this time’s going to be any different.A cheater with kids and a dead ex-wife?It doesn’t exactly spell out happy ending.It spells out trouble. 

“I know what I’m doing,” Freddie says, though it doesn’t reassure Roger in the slightest.  “This time it’s different, _he’s_ different, Rog.”

Roger purses his lips, because Freddie says that every time.He doesn’t want to shit all over Freddie’s parade but he feels fiercely protective of the other man and each prick that’s hurt him has only made Roger more wary of the next one to come along.He wants Freddie to find love as much as Freddie himself does, he just wishes Fred had better taste in men. 

“Well,” Roger says eventually.“If he shops at Waitrose I suppose he can’t be _that_ bad.”Civilised, at least.Roger’s pretty sure Freddie’s last boyfriend hadn’t known any shop beside Bargain Booze even existed.

He continues stalking this Brian suspect on Facebook while Freddie tells him about the afternoon at the art museum, though annoyingly he isn’t able to find much without being his friend.He hasn’t updated his profile picture in over a year but his liked pages are promising.‘Stop The Badger Cull’ and ‘End Bovine TB’—if he’s an animal welfare warrior he surely can’t be a sociopath, at least.Though he does also like about a thousand pages about space, 3D photography, and bread making— _riveting_ stuff. 

All in all, he seems harmless...on the surface.Roger remains suspicious because Freddie’s clearly besotted and someone has to keep their eyes open, here.Also, his Instagram is private so who _knows_ what he could be hiding on there. 

Roger requests to follow him and hopes Freddie doesn’t find out, but he’s doing this for _his_ own good.He could have photos on there of wild parties he’s at every night, shagging people left and right, and that would be _fine_ except Roger _knows_ that tone of voice Freddie’s got, and that happy-dazed look in his eyes.He’s falling for him hook, line, and sinker and if this needs to be headed off at the pass, Roger’s going to do it. 

He’s Googling him when the doorbell goes and Freddie refuses to go and get it so Roger, despite being the one to have _bought_ dinner in the first place, has to.When he returns, Freddie’s texting just as manically as he had been when Roger first came home that night, cheeks flushed when he grins up at Roger.

“Christ, Fred, could you look any more like Cupid came up and bit you on the ass?” Roger says, dumping the bags on the coffee table.  “You met this guy _yesterday_!”

“I feel like I’ve known him my whole life, Rog, I really do,” Freddie says, setting his phone aside to dig through the tubs and containers until he finds one he wants. 

Roger settles back with his own, getting right back to his research.“Oh no,” he says lowly, shaking his head.

“What?”Freddie’s panicked.

“You can’t date this guy, Freddie.”

“Why not?”

“He has a _Linked In_.”Roger shakes his head down at his phone.“Who the hell even uses Linked In any more?”

“Fucking hell, Roger!” Freddie says crossly.“I thought you were going to say he was married or something!Does he really have a Linked In?”

Roger nods solemnly.“He seems a bit nerdy, is he even your type?”

“He’s not, actually,” Freddie allows.  He tends to go for men bigger than Brian—Brian’s easily taller than any of his previous boyfriends but he’s skinny as a rake, which isn’t Freddie’s usual style at all.  Not that it had made any difference in the bedroom; he’d been _more_ than just well-equipped in the department Freddie really cares about.  “He’s a professor up at the uni.”

“ _Ooh_!” Roger lets out, waggling his eyebrows.  “Hot for teacher.  It’s like a porno.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter!” Freddie scolds him, as though didn’t just brag about how big the guy’s cock was. 

Roger snorts and tries to push aside his worry for now so he can be an attentive friend while Freddie continues gushing about the guy.There’s nothing to do but wait and see how things go, keep an eye out for the usual warning signs—he’s been through this enough times to spot them a mile off, by now. 

“What time did you say you were going to dinner again?” he asks casually.

“He’s picking me up at seven,” Freddie replies, not suspicious in the slightest, too busy trying to eat Chinese with one hand and text with the other. 

Roger nods and doesn’t say anything else, mentally rearranging his evening a bit to make sure he’s here tomorrow night to get a feel for the guy when he shows up, and to make sure he’s home later when Freddie’s due back.

Freddie would accuse him of interfering but Roger can’t stand to just sit by and watch Freddie be hurt again, so whoever Brian May is, he better be the _perfect_ fucking gentleman. 

If not, well.Roger knows exactly where he works. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter doesn't show anything but there are hints at past domestic abuse between romantic/sexual partners.

 

 

It's not altogether unsurprising, because Freddie's never on time for anything, but the knock on the door comes far before he's ready.

"Oh, fuck! Rog, could you get that, darling?"

Roger, who has arranged his night around precisely this circumstance, is conveniently poised in the living room ready to do exactly that.

"Sure thing," he calls back, strolling over to the door and swinging it open with a flourish.

The man stood on the threshold is definitely Brian May—there's no mistaking that hair—and he immediately wins Roger over a tiny bit because he has flowers in his hand.

"Oh," he says with some surprise, staring at Roger. "Hi. Um, is Freddie here?"

"He's just in the shower, he won't be long." This is a bald-faced lie because Freddie takes fucking ages in the shower, it's a daily battle between them, but that's fine. Roger wants some time to feel this guy out. "You may as well come in."

He steps back to let Brian pass, closing the door behind him with an ominous snap.

"Roger, I take it?" Brian asks, offering the hand not holding the flowers. There are immediately three cats winding around his shins, vying for attention. "Brian."

Roger shakes his hand with a nod. He has to force himself not to scowl warningly at the guy; technically he hasn't done anything wrong. _Yet_.

"So," Roger starts, waving Brian toward the sofa and heading for the kitchen. It's a big open-plan flat so he can easily look over the breakfast bar and talk to him. "Can I get you a drink? Vodka tonic? Beer? Coke?"

Brian carefully picks his way around the cats and takes a seat on the sofa, at which point a big ginger cat immediately jumps up into his lap and makes itself at home there. "A beer would be great, thanks," Brian says, giving the cat a scratch behind the ears.

Roger reluctantly gives him a point for being nice to Oscar, who doesn't usually like anyone except Freddie, but also puts a little mental tally toward 'potentially a drunk/alcoholic/violent alcoholic drunk' and fetches two beers from the fridge. He opens the tops of both with the familiar, satisfying _hiss_ of the cap popping and gives one to Brian, leaning against a bookshelf as he stares him down.

Brian meets his gaze over his beer bottle as he takes a sip and arches an eyebrow, quite the picture with the flowers still clutched in his other hand and Oscar perched on his knees. "Is something wrong?"

"I don't know," Roger says. "Is it?"

Brian blinks at that, a bit wrong-footed, and Roger thinks, _Aha!_

"I don't think so," Brian replies, glancing around. The apartment is nice; open, spacious, airy. It's not your usual bachelor pad at all, too full of books and art and bulging shopping bags with brand new shirts and ties spilling out, the tags still attached. "Your flat's great, I love the paintings you have up."

He really does; they're bright, colourful things, full of big, expressive strokes and emotions with darker edges and corners and swirls hidden away. Even Brian, who doesn't understand art at all, can feel the depth of feeling in them, feels like he can look at them and just _know_ that snapshot of feeling the artist was trying to capture, as though it was written there in words.

Roger follows his gaze. "Yeah," he agrees. "They're Freddie's."

Brian nearly chokes on his beer. "As in, he painted them?" he asks, gently pushing Oscar off his lap so he can stand up to get a better look.

There really is a lot of him, Roger thinks as he watches him unfold from the sofa. Too much, really, for their small apartment. He's skinny as a rake, not Freddie's usual type at all, but he has to duck his head to avoid getting brained on their 'antique' chandelier that Freddie will insist is some _fancy-French-word_ original but Roger was with him when he bought it from the charity shop down the road for eighty quid when they first moved in.

"Yeah," Roger says. He drinks his beer and watches as Brian walks closer to the nearest painting, inspecting it closely, beer forgotten on the coffee table behind him.

"Wow," he says quietly. "I didn't realise he was… _good_."

Roger has to snort at that, despite himself. "Yeah, he's alright. Fuck if I really get any of it but they look pretty."

"What do you do?" Brian asks conversationally, not actually paying Roger any attention at all and wandering along to the next painting, hung beside the biggest window. Roger would be offended but actually most of Freddie's boyfriends don't show the slightest hint of interest in his work so this is another reluctant point in Brian's favour.

"Dental assistant. So, how did you and Freddie meet?" He's had the story from Freddie but if he can catch Brian out here in a lie of some kind, he can mark a point against him.

Brian finally turns away from the picture and re-takes his seat on the sofa. "Just in Waitrose," he says. "My daughter wandered off and Freddie found her."

"She wandered off?" Roger asks. "Seems pretty irresponsible to lose a child." Point.

Brian blushes a bit. "I know, it's awful," he says, shaking his head. "I was a bit of a mess. If Freddie hadn't come over and helped me out, I'd probably still be in there now." He laughs a bit but Roger doesn't join him, still suspicious. He _seems_ fine on the surface, but a lot of them do. They're good at hiding what's underneath, at tricking you into thinking they're fine, they're going to treat him right, they're going to _stay_. Roger's seen it all before.

"You jumped into shagging him pretty quickly," Roger notes casually. "Why bother sticking around?"

Brian's eyebrows jump toward his hairline. "Excuse me?"

"Well," Roger says, "you've got what you wanted. Why bother with dinner?"

Brian looks absolutely furious for a second, so much so that Roger actually almost regrets his blunt line of questioning. "Why _bother_?" Brian repeats. "I like him. I want to have dinner with him. Is that a problem? Where is Freddie, anyway?"

Roger's irritated him. Good. Roger still doesn't _trust_ him but his reaction tells him a lot. No clenched fists, no shouting, not even any swearing. No temper in ( _im_ )polite company, though that isn't to say that there's no temper at all.

"Like I said, he's in the shower. He won't be long."

Brian looks like Freddie's shower can't be over quick enough for his liking and Roger hopes he doesn't report all of this back to Freddie, who'll go apeshit at him for interfering and it'll cost Roger about a month's salary of wine and good take-out to earn his good grace back. It'll be worth it though to realise the guy's a bad egg _before_ Freddie lets his heart run away with him again.

"So, a dental assistant," Brian says.

So he _was_ listening.

"Not a dentist?" One eyebrow goes up, pointedly.

Roger can't believe the fucking audacity. "No," he says shortly. He kind of has to admire the shot; he supposes he deserves it, a bit. "I'm working on it."

Brian gives an, _Ahh_ sort of nod and sips his beer without replying, letting Roger stew in his own inadequacies for a moment. It's annoyingly effective.

Point to Brian. At least he's not a doormat.

"Freddie said you're like a teacher or something?" he says. Actually Freddie told him that Brian was a distinguished lecturer at the university and a published astrophysicist with the 'Dr' in his name that Roger always wanted, but Roger's not about to let that on.

"Up at the university, yeah," Brian says. "Astrophysics."

"Sounds boring," Roger says. He's being outwardly rude now, trying to goad Brian into doing _something_ bad but it doesn't work, it just makes _him_ look like an asshole. Freddie's going to kill him if he finds out.

Brian doesn't seem offended. "Most people think that at first," he says instead. "I think it's fascinating."

Roger's interrupted, probably fortunately, from saying that that doesn't make Brian a _real_ doctor because the bathroom door bangs open suddenly and Freddie streaks past in nothing but a towel and a hair turban with a 'Sorry, darling, I'll just be two minutes!' before slamming into his bedroom.

Even that brief moment leaves Brian with a dopey grin on his face and Roger thinks, for the first time, that this guy might actually be as hopelessly gone for Freddie as Freddie is for him.

"Word to the wise, he will _not_ be two minutes," Roger says, as a sort of peace offering. "He spent all day today trying to decide what to wear and he still hadn't decided when he got in the shower."

Brian's grin isn't dented in the slightest. "Did he?" he asks hopefully. He'd spent a good hour in his own room, trying on different shirts and discarding them, parading them for Jack and Lily ( _No, Daddy,_ not _that one!_ ) until they got bored of that game and left him to fend for himself. His mum helped him in the end, when she showed up to collect the kids for their sleepover, which is a secret Brian will take to his _grave_.

He'd gone simple; black jeans and a plain white shirt, with enough buttons left open that his mother had tutted at him. You can't go wrong, Brian had told Lily and Jack when he'd first tried on this combination, with black and white. Of course, then he'd changed into and out of it about six times, but that was neither here nor there.

"Yep, he's a nightmare," Roger says. He's allowed to say that about Freddie, because he lives with him and loves him and puts up with him on a daily basis. If anyone else said it about him he'd deck them.

Brian still has the dopey grin on his face, looking for all the world like Roger _has_ hit him. With a frying pan, right on the back of the head. Jesus _Christ_.

"Look," Roger says suddenly, coming over and sitting on the coffee table in front of him. "You seem like a decent enough guy. Good job, family man—all that, right? And Freddie clearly likes you."

Brian's managed to get some control over his expression, now appropriately serious to match Roger's change in tone, watching him a bit warily.

"But the thing is, _Brian_ ," Roger continues, throwing a quick look over his shoulder to make sure Freddie isn't about to come out of his room—unlikely within the next twenty minutes, but you never know. "The thing is, Freddie has a shit track record when it comes to men. Really, really _shit_. He always picks the worst. So when he told me he met you, I wasn't all that happy. You've got a lot of baggage."

Brian listens to all this in thoughtful silence, doesn't even try to interrupt or protest that last part. He knows it's true.

"Maybe you're not like the others. Maybe you're not a drunk and maybe you're not violent, maybe you're the nicest, most perfect guy in the world—I really fucking hope you are. 'Cause if you're not…" Roger has to pause for a moment, feeling his temper swell as though Brian's already committed some crime. "If you hurt him. If you cheat on him. If you ever lay a hand on him he doesn't want...I'll ruin your fucking life." He meets Brian's eyes as he says it, wants him to know how deadly fucking serious he is, and Brian's gaze is equally sombre.

Brian just nods, letting a moment of quiet stretch between them for those words to sink in. "I'm not going to hurt him," he says simply. He doesn't feel like he necessarily owes Roger, a stranger, this promise, but he gives it all the same. He's glad to know that Freddie's got such a doggedly loyal friend looking out for him, in all honesty. Some of Roger's words have stuck hard in his mind and Brian knows he's never going to be able to shake them. _Maybe you're not violent_.

Roger, for his part, does believe that Brian means it. But he's seen that before, too. Guys who are nice as pie until they've had a bit to drink, until they've had a couple lines of coke, until Freddie's singing too loud in the shower when they're hungover. He's seen it all.

Roger wants to say something else, wants to make sure Brian understands how absolutely serious he is, wants to interrogate him about everything under the sun, about the _cheating_ , about what the fuck he's looking for out of this, if this is just a summertime thing or what, but Freddie emerges before he can.

He's gotten into a shirt but he still has the towel around his hips and a look of pure panic on his face. "Brian, darling!" he greets from the door, offering him a glowing smile that erases the stress at once. "You look positively _edible_ , my dear!"

Brian gets up and steps around Roger, putting his beer down and holding out the flowers. "I missed you," he says, and Freddie gives a little gasp, clutching both hands together in delight before he takes the flowers.

"Are these for me?" he asks, wide-eyed as a doe.

Brian leans forward to kiss him over the petals, catching the tip of his nose rather than his mouth, and Freddie blushes something fierce.

"Oh!" he says softly. "I missed you, too." He leans a little to the side to seek out Roger, who's pretending not to be watching them. "Roger, won't you be an angel and find a vase for these?" he asks, taking Brian's hand to tug him past him into the bedroom and holding the bouquet out to Roger.

Roger scowls suspiciously at Freddie but he gets up and takes the flowers. "Don't you fucking dare shag in there while I'm still here," he says warningly.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous, I just need Brian's help picking an outfit, I haven't a clue where we're going," Freddie tells him, quickly ducking back through his door and shutting it on Roger's doubtful face.

When Freddie turns around, Brian is right _there_ and they're halfway through a kiss before Freddie's even registered quite how close he is.

It's only been a day but Freddie feels like he's been starving for him, a man deprived of light suddenly shown the sun again, turning his face up to it, basking in it, his limbs going loose as the warmth floods through him.

Brian's hands are on his hips, thumbs slipping inside the tight band of the towel and Freddie hums and pulls away a bit. "I really don't know what to wear," he confesses. "What's the dress code? Do I need to be smart?" Brian's in a smart shirt, but he's also in jeans and the shirt's barely buttoned ( _how_ Freddie is expected to focus on conversation tonight, he has no idea), so Freddie has no idea what that's supposed to be. Is that smart casual? Does anyone even know what the fuck smart casual even means?

"Mmm, not this," Brian murmurs. His hands abandon the towel and drift up instead, opening a button, then two, three...all of them, slowly pushing Freddie's shirt off his shoulders. "They definitely won't let you in if you wear this."

The shirt crumples to the floor and Freddie swallows.

"Or this," Brian continues, tugging lightly at the towel until it comes loose and pools around Freddie's feet. "It's a very strict dress code."

"Oh?" Freddie can barely breathe, certainly can't think straight—all of his blood has made a swift retreat from his brain and rushed directly to his cock.

"Mhmm." Brian kisses him again, one hand under his chin to tip his head up, and blindly walks him backward to the bed.

Freddie obligingly parts his legs so Brian can lie down on top of him and deepens their kiss, hand on the back of his neck. "What time is our reservation?" he asks when he has to pause for breath.

"Eight," Brian tells him, stroking a hand down his chest, scratching lightly at a nipple, letting the tip of his tongue graze over the hickies he'd left yesterday, still vivid against Freddie's neck. "We have a little time." He catches the bare sole of Freddie's foot in one hand and pushes his leg back, bending his knee until he has Freddie just as he wants him, lets the other hand drift between his thighs to tease with one long finger. "If you're quick."

Freddie nods vigorously, fumbling behind him for his dresser, for condoms and lube. "I can be quick."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

They are not quick, or quiet.

Roger yells at them through the door but they take no notice, to that or to the texts that ping through on Freddie's phone.

 

**you bloody harlot couldn't you wait til I was gone!?**

**I'm going out**

**CALL ME if anything's not alright**

 

It's well beyond eight by the time they stumble from Freddie's apartment, newly-dressed and practically _glowing_ with satisfaction.

They hold hands walking down the street, strolling toward the restaurant in no great hurry, neither having paid attention to the time, still managing to chatter away about their respective days despite having been texting nearly non-stop since yesterday.

"So yeah, she wants me to come into the school to speak with her," Brian says worriedly. "I don't know how to help him. I try to talk to him but he just closes up on me, I don't know how to get through. He was always closer to their mum than to me."

Freddie gives his hand a little squeeze. "Give him time, dear," he says gently. He knows nothing about children and very little about grief, but it feels like the right thing to say. "The school may have some suggestions. Have you tried...you know, therapy?"

Brian nods. "He sees the school counsellor every week, both of them do. I think I need to start looking for something private as well, though. Someone better, a specialist."

"Probably best," Freddie agrees. "Poor things, I can't even imagine." Doesn't _want_ to imagine.

Brian gives a small, sad sigh but he brightens a bit after a moment. "Lily's asked about you so many times today, you wouldn't believe," he says with a pleased little grin. "And I think my mother's about ready to adopt you on the spot." He freezes suddenly as those words leave his mouth, wondering if that's a bit much, but Freddie gives a tiny little skip of happiness and laughs.

"She's a darling, both of them are. God, though, I really thought I was going to _die_ when I opened the door yesterday," Freddie says, snorting.

"I'm _so_ sorry," Brian says again, still half in disbelief that it had happened.

"Lucky I'd gotten dressed," Freddie adds, shaking his head.

"You'd have probably given her a heart attack."

"What a great start that would have been—'Hi Brian, thanks for the fantastic shag, sorry about your mother'," Freddie quotes and feels like he might float with pleasure when Brian laughs.

"Fantastic, huh?" Brian asks with a smug smirk that he does not try to hide at _all_.

"Oh yes," Freddie says, "A solid six out of ten, darling."

"Six out of ten!" Brian repeats with an indignant snort. "I haven't gotten a grade that bad since I was allowed to give up P.E. We'll have to work on that."

Freddie feels warm through. "I'm sure we could manage that." He's half a mind to suggest that they fob off dinner altogether and go _work on that_ right now but they reach the restaurant right then so he doesn't get the chance to.

It's a decent place, not overly strict or formal but definitely upscale, a few of Freddie's friends have recommended it to him before. The food's supposed to be fantastic and they serve feature cocktails all night in the bar attached but they never get that far because they're stopped by the maître d′, who tells them that their reservation expired an hour ago and they no longer have a table.

"What?" Brian asks, stunned. "But it's only…" He glances down at his watch and shuts up. Gone nine. He shoots a sidelong glance at Freddie that effectively communicates, _Shit, I didn't realise we were so long_ , and turns back to the waiter. "Aren't there any other tables?" he asks hopefully, though he already knows the answer. Getting the reservation he had for tonight had been a pain in the ass and in the end only achievable through a favour from one of his colleagues at the university.

"Sorry sir, we're fully booked tonight. You could try calling in the morning to secure a new reservation," the waiter suggests with a practiced apologetic air.

"Isn't there anything at all you can do? _Please_?" Freddie asks hopefully. He's so worried that Brian will just chuck the whole thing in if they can't get in here, tell him that they'll do dinner another time and then disappear off into the night, never to be heard from again.

The waiter shakes his head. "Sorry, sir. Like I said, we're fully booked. You'll have to try somewhere else."

Freddie feels like either crying or stomping his foot and pitching a fit to get his way, neither of which are going to impress Brian so he refrains with great self-control, following Brian as he tugs on his hand and pulls him back out onto the street.

"Well then," Freddie says quietly.

"There'll be somewhere else." Brian's optimistic and leads the way as he strides down the street.

They stop in every restaurant in what feels like a five mile radius but nothing that looks halfway decent has a table available, not even when Brian gives a painfully unsubtle hint that he'll pay extra and Freddie gets a tiny bit tearful. There's nothing.

They're back out on the street again, having been denied by yet another manager, and Freddie feels hopeless and starving hungry, wishing for what must be the first time in his life that he'd skipped sex because now they've ruined their evening.

"Oh, this is bloody ridiculous," Brian huffs. "I give up."

Freddie's stomach drops and he tries to mentally prepare himself for this all to end right now, but Brian doesn't release his hand or make his excuses and leave. He starts walking again, swinging Freddie's hand between them. "I've got an idea," he says. "It's not the romantic meal I was hoping to have with you, I'm afraid, but we'll have to make do."

Freddie is more than happy to make do with just about anything so long as Brian doesn't leave him yet, and his stomach swoops a bit hearing about these plans for a _romantic meal_. They don't even have to have it at this point; just knowing that Brian wanted that, with Freddie, is probably enough to keep Freddie in good spirits for the next week. "What is it?"

"You'll see," Brian says, with a mysterious little wink and half-smile.

He takes them to, of all places, an all-night Tesco Express and grabs a basket from just inside the door. "Right, what are you hungry for?" Brian asks.

Freddie arches his eyebrows and gives a little laugh. "Are you serious, darling?"

"Course. What do you want? Doritos? Salsa?" Brian puts both in the basket. "Biscuits?" He chucks in some custard creams and a packet of Hob Nobs, wandering up and down the aisles while Freddie silently marvels at him. He's more decisive here than he was in Waitrose, but only because he's putting _everything_ in his basket.

By the time they get to the till their basket is overflowing with food—picnic eggs and pre-packed boiled eggs, egg mayo sandwiches and Creme Eggs and Mini Eggs. Strawberries, grapes, oranges, blueberries, raspberries and the very last pack of ripe'n'ready peaches in the shop. Doritos, Monster Munch, Quavers, six different flavours of Walkers, salt and vinegar sticks and cheese twists. Breadsticks and chocolate chip muffins and a bottle of wine that Freddie's sure will be vile—it's from _Tesco Express_ —but doesn't speak a word of complaint because he loves Brian more and more with every passing second.

They pack it all up into bulging carrier bags and Brian does the gentlemanly thing and gives Freddie the bag full of crisps to carry while he nearly slices his palms open on the string-like handles as he carries the rest all the way back to his car.

"Where are we going?" Freddie asks as he gets in and Brian starts the engine.

"You'll see," Brian says again.

He drives them through the city, radio playing softly while the warm glow of the streetlights intermittently floods the car with light. Brian's face is serious as he watches the road, though he occasionally glances over and smiles like he can't quite believe Freddie's there.

They must be going somewhere, but Freddie would be quite happy to drive like this forever.

Every time they sit in traffic or find themselves on a steady road so Brian doesn't need to change gear for a bit, he reaches over to take Freddie's hand, sometimes leaves them resting on Freddie's knee, other times pulls both of their hands over into his own lap.

He nods his head with the music and Freddie quietly hums along with the songs, but they don't talk much. There's a sweet, easy, companionable peace between them that doesn't require anything but this.

Eventually they park up, unexpectedly, outside the science museum and Freddie leans forward to peer up at the sign as Brian kills the engine. "Uh, darling...I think they're closed." The place is dark and dead, locked up and abandoned for the night.

Brian merely lifts his keys and gives them a shake. "Not for us."

"You have a _key_?"

Brian grins, getting out of the car and opening the back to fetch out their many carrier bags while Freddie scrambles to join him. "They have a partnership with the astronomy department at the university—I do a lot of talks here, helped design parts of their space exhibit, and I can bring my students along whenever I want," he says, handing over the bag with the crisps again and batting Freddie's hand away when he reaches for another bag to carry. "I've got it, don't worry."

Freddie gladly lets Brian take on the responsibility for all the heavy bags once again. "I'm not your student," he points out. "Won't we get in trouble?" Not that he particularly _minds_ —it makes the whole thing rather exciting—but he doesn't want to be the reason Brian gets a warning at work or something.

"No, it's fine," Brian assures him, slamming the doors shut and locking the car over his shoulder. "Besides, there won't be anyone else here, this time of night. Just us."

And Freddie likes _that_ idea a lot.

There's a bit of a fumble at the doors and Freddie winds up taking an extra carrier bag so Brian can unlock the door and get them inside.

It's dark and a bit eerie, lit only by the green glow of the emergency exit signs and a few dim security lights, and Freddie's a bit on edge as he looks around. He's only ever been here once before, years and years ago when Kash was young, and the dark, shadowy atrium and corridors beyond look almost sinister and threatening without the hustle and bustle of hundreds of museum-goers to fill them. 

Brian appears to have no such qualms, striding through the main reception area with the same confidence he has in the rooms of his own home and Freddie hastens to follow. He doesn't want to get lost in here and can imagine it happening all too easily.

He quickly loses track of where they are or where they're going as Brian takes him through doors, along hallways, up three flights of stairs and past several exhibits that are probably fascinating in the light of day, but in the dark just look creepy.

"Here we go," Brian says. His voice is loud in the empty space and makes Freddie jump a bit as he's guided through a door and realises they're in the space section Brian talked about. There's an empty astronaut suit standing right inside that seems to loom suddenly out of the darkness, huge and white and _terrifying_ , and Freddie gives a slight yelp and nearly bowls Brian over as he leaps back.

Brian grabs his arm, alarmed, before he realises what happened and laughs.

"Christ!" Freddie gasps. "I thought that was a _person_!"

Brian's still laughing. "My students all call him Clive, I think there's some inside joke I just don't get," he says, walking Freddie past Clive and up to another door, which he has to open with another key. " _This_ is why I brought you."

He steps through, leading Freddie into a big, domed room filled with seats as though he's at the cinema, though there's no screen.

"I've never seen a lecture hall like this before."

"That's because it's not a lecture hall," Brian tells him. He dumps all the carrier bags down in the aisle and moves over to the computer desk, pointing Freddie to go and sit with all the bags.

Freddie does so, taking off his jacket and laying it on the floor before he sits down—his jeans are white and who knows how often the floor here gets cleaned.

Despite Brian's previous comment, Freddie feels a lot like he's in school again, sitting cross-legged on the carpet and waiting for his teacher to call out a role-call or assign a new reading book.

He says as much and Brian laughs again. "I _do_ teach a lot in here," he says thoughtfully.

" _Dr May_ ," Freddie purrs, and Brian pauses what he's doing to glance up at him with a sudden heat in his gaze. "Will you teach me?"

"If you want to learn," Brian says after a moment, then presses something which dims the lights and suddenly, the domed ceiling is awash with stars, thousands of them glittering above them as though they're lying beneath the night sky.

Freddie gives a soft gasp, throwing his head back to take them all in, eyes wide. They're in the planetarium, he realises. They never had this here when he visited as a teenager, it was only built a few years ago.

"Wow," he breathes as Brian comes to sit with him, putting his own jacket down the way Freddie has.

"Incredible, isn't it?" Brian murmurs, tipping his head back to look. He's been here more times than he could ever count, looked up at the real night sky more times than he could count, been on research trips and studied these stars and looked at them in books and documentaries for years and years, but they never fail to take his breath away.

"This is amazing," Freddie says, still staring up. "There are loads in here!"

"They're all real," Brian says, and at that Freddie's head comes down, eyebrows jumping up.

"What? No way."

"They are," Brian says with a little grin. "You'd never be able to see this many in the city—there's too much light. But if there wasn't any and there was no moon, this is what you'd see. Amazing, isn't it?"

Freddie's actually speechless for a moment. "I had no idea," he says eventually. "I had no idea there were so many." They seem endless and the longer he looks, the more he seems to see. "Those are really all in the sky right now?"

"Every one of them," Brian confirms, opening a bag of crisps and the salsa and helping himself.

He doesn't get a chance to eat any though because just then Freddie can't help himself from leaning over and kissing him—just quickly, quiet and chaste.

"This is so much better than that restaurant," Freddie tells him, and means it with his whole heart.

Brian grins bashfully. "I'm glad you think so. I was planning on bringing you here anyway, but not tonight."

Freddie's intrigued by that and digs his own hand into the big bag of Doritos, loading it up with salsa. "Oh?" he asks. "When would you have brought me here?"

"Soon," Brian says, crunching on a crisp as he thinks. "Maybe a fifth or sixth date."

 _Fifth or sixth date_! He was planning on a fifth or sixth date! Freddie can barely _breathe_ , hearing that, and feels like he might have just inflated to twice his usual size with sheer happiness.

"Do you think we'll get that many?" Freddie can't help but ask, hoping it sounds as casual as he wants it to.

Brian meets his eyes. "Yeah," he says seriously.

Freddie shyly bites his lip and ducks his head so Brian won't see just how big his smile is.

"So, do you think this counts as a first or a second date?" Freddie asks curiously.

"Hmm...second," Brian decides. "Our third will have to be the romantic meal I'd planned for tonight. And then you can choose the fourth," he says, offering Freddie a grin so big it's all Freddie can do not to knock the food everywhere and kiss him again, kiss him senseless.

They plough through the food in record time, both starving after having been hunting for a restaurant for who-knows-how-long. They realise far too late that they don't have glasses for the wine, or anything to open the bottle with, so that gets abandoned but everything else at least gets opened and sampled. They've bought way too much for just two people but neither of them care, happy to pick and graze as they chat away, the stars twinkling overhead.

It's calm and relaxed, easy company that never once lapses into awkward silence and more than once devolves into fits of the giggles as though they're schoolgirls on a field trip.

Then Freddie opens one of the Creme Eggs and sets to licking out the centre, only realising when he's nearly done that Brian's watching him with hungry intensity, though all thoughts of eating are quickly abandoned.

As soon as Freddie looks up and catches his eye, he's on him, biscuits crushed under his knees as he scrambles forward and tugs Freddie in for a proper kiss, licking the sweet taste of chocolate from his mouth.

Freddie groans and has to lie back with the way Brian's weight is pushing against him, unable to hold them both up, and Brian is absolutely fine with that. He settles on top of him and carries on kissing him, mentally trying to decide if it's too soon into the kiss to start pulling Freddie's jeans down when Freddie squeezes his crotch and answers that for him.

They waste no time at all in pulling desperately at each other's clothes, hindered by the fact that neither can bear to stop kissing for more than half a second so they keep interrupting themselves to carry on.

They've not long ago done this but that doesn't dampen any of the enthusiasm whatsoever, both of them hard and leaking by the time they're finally out of their jeans and able to grind together properly.

Brian wraps one hand around both of them and strokes a few times, Freddie bucking up into him before he grabs his wrist. "Don't waste it," he gasps. "Fuck me, darling, I want you to fuck me under all these stars."

As it happens, that is _exactly_ what Brian wants as well and he's more than happy to oblige. He has lube and a condom in his wallet and drags his jeans over to fish the packets out.

Freddie's already well-prepared from earlier so Brian doesn't have to do much, just lubes up his fingers and presses them inside to check that he's still okay to go before rolling the condom on.

Once it's in place, though, he doesn't sink inside right away. Instead he kisses Freddie again, deeply, before pulling away and rolling off onto his back.

"Brian, no," Freddie says quickly, sitting up to grab at him. "Fuck _me_ , I want it."

"Like this," Brian says, getting an arm around Freddie and pulling him over onto him, tugging until Freddie gets the message and straddles him obligingly. "That's it. Can you do it from here?"

Freddie swallows and sets his knees as comfortably as he can, kneeling up to give himself room. He doesn't usually like to do this, prefers to be catered to and waited upon in bed, if he's honest (the words _high maintenance_ have been thrown at him during more break-up fights than Freddie cares to remember), but for Brian he thinks he'd do just about anything.

Brian helpfully pushes two fingers into him and with his other hand, grasps his own cock and presses it against Freddie's entrance so he can feel him. He takes his fingers away and nudges in just gently.

"There, that's it, just..." Brian doesn't finish what he's saying, pulling gently on Freddie's hips to indicate what he wants. He's got his lip between his teeth, gaze focused on where his cock disappears into Freddie with a razor-sharp intensity.

Freddie nods and braces himself, putting his hands on Brian's shoulders and leaning on him so he won't over-balance as he starts to push down.

It's slow-going but it's still a _lot_ , Freddie has to pause several times to catch his breath and collect himself while Brian rubs both hands soothingly along his thighs.

"You feel so fucking good like this, Fred," he whispers, tipping his head back and gazing up at the stars overhead as Freddie takes him in some more, squeezing around him and breathing hard.

"You're so _fucking_ big, darling," Freddie says hoarsely. It's a compliment usually but a criticism right now—positioned as he is, trying to guide himself down, he has no idea how the fuck they'll ever get it all the way in. How the fuck it's fit before is a fucking _mystery_ to him.

"Why don't we switch and you just fuck me?" Freddie suggests breathlessly, his thighs aching with the effort of keeping himself steady.

Brian grins. "Lazy," he says fondly, and doesn't move. "You’re doing so well, this feels amazing, Freddie. Just a bit more now." It's not really true, Freddie's barely taken half, but it seems kinder to lie about that.

It does give Freddie a renewed vigour and he licks his lips, trying to relax a bit and sinking further down as Brian groans, the slow pace and the way Freddie's holding himself so tightly making the whole thing almost unbearably pleasurable.

"That's it," Brian says, digging his nails into Freddie's thighs a bit. "Nearly there now."

"You said that about eight fucking inches ago!" Freddie says, too breathless to really sound cross. He's red-faced with the effort and his thighs are trembling so much he's a little worried they're going to give out and he's going to end up getting the last bit like a punch to the gut if he just _falls_. "Won't you just fuck me instead, darling?"

Brian laughs indulgently. "If you really want me to, I will," he relents, giving Freddie's thigh a little pat. "You just look so fucking beautiful like this, with all the stars. I could look at you like this forever."  

The gentle, _genuine_ way he says that goes right through Freddie, sings to something in the core of him.

Brian goes as if to sit up so he can switch their positions and Freddie pushes back down on his shoulders, shaking his head.

"No, no, I'll do it," he says quickly. He's more touched than he could say, that Brian thinks him _beautiful_ , that he wants to see him like this, with the stars. And while Freddie might begrudge the effort, a little bit, none of his previous partners have ever really tried to do much like this with him—most of them were the quick-shag-and-fall-asleep types, the ones who ever made it to a bedroom with him, anyway. Freddie's had more than his fair share of club bathroom rendezvous and back-of-the-car quickies. This is different. Brian's watching him like he's part of the sky above them, with such wonder you'd think that Freddie was something truly special, and—mortifyingly—it brings a lump to Freddie's throat.

He blinks hard and tries to focus on just the two of them, the feeling of it, Brian inside him, the floor under his knees, the fucking _biscuit crumbs_ , anything, but his eyes are stinging.

Brian notices immediately. How could he not, with how intently he's watching him?

"Freddie?" He's concerned. It makes the sting worse.

Freddie desperately shakes his head as Brian tries to dislodge him, clutching at his shoulders. "I'm fine, I'm fine!" he insists.

"What's wrong? Are you hurting? Fuck, let me…" For all Freddie tries to cling to him, Brian manages to push him off, rolling to get up on his knees. His hands are fluttering uselessly, like he's not sure if he should reach out and touch or not. "I'm so sorry, Freddie, are you okay?"

It's all just making it worse, making it so much worse. Because Brian fucking _cares_ , thinks he's hurt Freddie or something even though he's done the opposite. He's _not_ hurt him so much even in the short space of time that he's known him that it's made Freddie realise suddenly, painfully, the stark difference between _this_ and every other man he's had anything approaching a relationship with.

"I'm fine, don't apologise, darling, please," Freddie says a tad shakily, sitting down properly and wiping a hand over his face. " _I'm_ the one who's sorry, I don't know what's the matter with me."

"It's okay," Brian says gently. "Can I…" He puts out a hand as though to pull Freddie in and Freddie leans into him, melting into his embrace as Brian wraps both arms around him and pulls him as close as he can get. He presses a tiny, gentle kiss just behind his ear and Freddie has to swallow hard to keep new tears at bay.

"You're too good to me," Freddie whispers after a moment, when he thinks he can get his voice to work. He doesn't know what he's going to do when this ends. He won't cope with losing this, not after tasting it—even this brief glimpse into a world of softness is too much. It's cruel. It's all he's ever wanted.

Brian gives a disbelieving laugh at that. "I've bought us biscuits from Tesco and wine we can't even open," he disagrees. "I'd be shocked if you even let me take you out again after this."

Freddie squeezes him so tightly it makes his arms ache. "Of course I will," he says quickly. "Please, this is the most perfect date, I'm so sorry I've ruined things, Brian, darling. I still want to…"

He dips a hand between them to try and find Brian's cock but Brian catches his wrist before he can do more than give him a squeeze.

"Why don't we hold off on that for a bit?" he suggests gently, removing Freddie's hand and slipping the condom off a second later, chucking it into their rubbish bag.

"You don't want me," Freddie whispers, near-silent with the force of his upset. If he can't give Brian sex, he doesn't know how to make him stay.

"I _do_ want you," Brian corrects him at once, arm snaking back around Freddie's back. "A lot, but not if you're upset. Will you lie down with me?"

Freddie nods and lets Brian pull him back, nestling into his chest and relaxing a tiny, tiny bit when he feels Brian's arm around him again, safe and secure. His other hand comes up to comb through Freddie's hair, pushing it back from his forehead, raking his fingers back and forth in a surprisingly soothing way; Freddie finds his eyes slipping closed almost of their own accord.

"Roger talked to me while you were in the shower," Brian says softly.

Freddie's eyes fly back open at once. "What did he say?" he asks warily.

"Nothing really specific," Brian replies, his fingers still in Freddie's hair despite Freddie's sudden tension. "He sort of...gave the impression that you, maybe…" He pauses, trying to think how the fuck to say this properly. _Maybe you're not violent_. "He said you had bad taste in men," Brian says eventually. "He doesn't trust me at all."

"I'm so sorry, I'll talk to him—"

"No, no, that's not what I mean, you don't have to apologise," Brian cuts him off. "I just mean...I just want you to know…" He doesn't know how to word this, doesn't really know if he should say anything at all. Brian's not about to scare Freddie off by using the L-word but it's on his mind, in his throat, it'd be so _easy_ because he already knows it's the truth. You don't need a lifetime to realise you love someone; sometimes you just _know_.

"Want me to know what?" Freddie asks him when he's silent for too long, trying to think about it too much.

"I'm going to be good to you," Brian says simply. He knows it'll take a lot more than that to prove it, but he's not planning on going anywhere.

Freddie ducks his face into Brian's chest so he won't see that he's tearful again—what a date he's turning out to be, crying all over the poor man.

Brian just rubs his back and patiently waits for him to collect himself. "Did you say you were a Virgo?" he asks after a long while of just quiet.

Freddie nods and peeks up at him at that. "Why?"

"That's Virgo, right there," Brian tells him, pointing.

He's got Freddie's attention; he rolls over so he's no longer got his face hidden in Brian, looking back up at he stars. "Where?"

"There." Brian takes his hand to guide it so Freddie can point himself and see, tracing the pattern for him.

Freddie smiles. "I thought you said it was a load of rubbish?" In fact he has a chain of texts from Brian from last night that prove it.

" _Astrology_ is," Brian says firmly, though there's amusement in his voice. "But the constellation is very real."

"Where's yours?" Freddie asks.

Brian points it out for him. "It's pretty hard to spot. That sort of 'Y' shape, there. Do you see it?"

Freddie hums his agreement, though he's not really sure if he's looking at the right thing; he could easily draw a Y between any of a hundred thousand stars up there.

"Lots of people think Virgo and Cancer don't go very well together," Freddie comments quietly, keeping his eyes above him and not looking at Brian. He doesn't know why he's trying to punch a hole in this already, testing it to see how easily it could collapse.

He needn't have worried.

Brian gives a soft snort. "Like I said," he says, pulling Freddie close again to find a comfortable position so they can lay there a while longer. "Load of rubbish."

 

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

 

They have a third date, and a fourth, and a fifth.

Brian doesn't manage to score another booking at the same restaurant so he takes Freddie somewhere just outside the city and they have a proper date, sat across from each other over a table with a candle and everything, feet tangled together between them.

They talk for hours and hours, over dinner, over text, in bed bathed in the afterglow. On Facetime during Brian's lunch breaks, in the car driving through the city and the taxis home.

They talk about everything.

Freddie talks about his parents and his little sister, finds himself telling Brian about his old boarding school and the long nights curled under the blankets, crying his heart out with homesickness. About the schoolmaster he'd had a crush on when he was a boy and his first, secret boyfriend a few years later. The flight to England at age seventeen with nothing but a bag of clothes stowed under his seat.

Long fingers fiddling with the stem of his wine glass, Brian tells Freddie about his ex-wife, about the joy of Jack being born and becoming a father for the first time, the eventual breakdown of his marriage and a little about the man he was unfaithful with. He talks about his degrees and dust clouds and the way society tells you you need to have a wife and children to be happy but you _don't_ , and how many years it took him to understand.

Freddie confesses that he isn't _out_ , really, to his parents but he thinks they know anyway. He doesn't hide it but he's never said, either. He's afraid of how his father will react.

And Brian blanches at that and gives a hollow laugh but then he tells Freddie that his own dad is trying and that's all Brian can ask of him, really.

It's not like trading secrets because it feels, somehow, like they already _know_. It turns out they lived just a stone's throw apart for years and never realised, and Freddie thinks to himself that the world was waiting for the right time, and this is it.

 

*** 

 

Brian cancels their sixth date.

Freddie's gutted and tries not to let on.

"I'm so sorry," Brian tells him down the phone. He sounds harried and distant, definitely has Freddie on loudspeaker while he tries to do a million other things. "Emma's still not well, I've cancelled the babysitter, I think I'd better stay here with her."

"Oh darling, don't be silly, of course," Freddie tells him quickly. "I hope she's okay."

"Just a bit of the flu, I think, I'm not really sure," Brian says. Freddie can hear Emma whining softly in the background, just on the verge of exhausted tears. Brian sounds exhausted, himself.

"Poor little thing," Freddie clucks. "Can I do anything, get you anything?"

"A kiss would help," Brian tells him and Freddie blushes even though nobody can see him.

"I'll save one for you," he promises. "Do you still want to meet for lunch tomorrow?"

"Definitely," Brian says firmly. His voice gets louder suddenly as he picks up the phone and puts it to his ear. "I'll let you know where I am, if she's still not well I probably won't be in work."

"We'll figure something out," Freddie assures him. Brian's distracted and though Freddie would love to monopolise his time and talk to him all night about nothing, Brian's needed elsewhere. "I'll see you then, darling."

"Bye, baby." Brian sounds dejected as he hangs up but the endearment still sends Freddie soaring straight to cloud nine and he practically floats across the apartment to Roger's room to go and bother him, now faced with the prospect of a long, boring evening by himself, which simply won't do.

" _Rooooog_ ," Freddie coos, leaning around his bedroom door.

Roger's comparing two shirts in the mirror and doesn't even turn around. "No," he says simply.

"What? I haven't even said anything!" Freddie protests.

"I know that tone of voice," Roger says. " _No_. I'm going out tonight."

"Roger," Freddie says plaintively, slipping further into the room. He has some great puppy eyes but Roger won't _look_ at him so they're not going to work yet. "Brian cancelled our date."

 _That_ gets his attention. Roger whips around so fast one of his shirts comes flying off the hanger and crumples on the floor. "He _what_? That bastard! I _knew_ he was no good, Freddie—"

"No, no!" Freddie says hurriedly. He may have misstepped, there; Roger is getting _slightly_ less frosty toward Brian but they're hardly pals yet and Freddie doesn't want to ruin their chances at one day getting along. Brian said he made Roger a coffee the other morning when he was round and even sat with him for a few minutes talking about music and there were no threats or insults of any kind. That's more than most of Freddie's...what the hell _are_ they?...have ever managed.

"He didn't cancel it to be an asshole," Freddie explains quickly. "His daughter's sick, he has to stay home with her."

Roger narrows his eyes, still suspicious.

"Rog, _please_ don't go out tonight, stay in with me," Freddie begs.

"Aah, Fred," Roger says, bending to pick his shirt back up. "Why don't you come out? You haven't been out in ages."

He hasn't, but that's because there's not much point any more when he has Brian and _he's_ definitely not out tonight so Freddie can't be bothered to go to all the effort of getting dressed up and getting drunk and being hungover tomorrow when he could just as well not do that and text Brian all night. It's not exactly the same as being _with_ him and Freddie _had_ been rather looking forward to having some really great sex later, but still. He's not in the mood for going out.

"Let's play Scrabble," Freddie suggests.

Roger just arches his eyebrows at him. "Freddie, seriously. I'm not _not_ going out just so we can play fucking _Scrabble_."

 

***

 

 They play Scrabble. Roger had agreed to _one_ quick game before he went out that quickly devolved into multiple games while he worked his way through his beers and grew steadily worse at spelling and Freddie wiped the floor with him with only minor cheating.

"That's not a fucking _word_ , Fred! Take that off!"

"It _is_ ," Freddie insists. "I'll ask Brian."

Roger can't stop himself from rolling his eyes, because that's pretty much all he bloody well hears from Freddie, these days.

"I don't care what _Doctor May_ says, it's not a word." Roger flicks the one tile Freddie had put down to make 'Ik' back at him.

**Is ik a word? xx we're playing scrabble and roger is trying to cheat xxxxxxxxx how's Emma doing? xxxxx**

When Freddie looks up from his phone, Roger's watching him intently.

"What?" Freddie asks, a tad unnerved by the focus though he can't help but glance back down at his phone when a reply pings back almost instantly.

**Sounds like there is a cheater playing but I don't think it's Roger...definitely not a word! Emma's still not great, I think I'm going to have to call the doctor xxxxxxxx**

"Oh, Brian says it's not a word," Freddie pouts.

"I always knew I liked that guy," Roger says, cheerfully leaning over to scribble out Freddie's score. "How's his kid?"

"Sounds like she's still not well," Freddie tells him, busily typing his reply back to Brian. "I hope she's okay, she's just the dearest little thing."

Roger has the same look back on his face when Freddie sets his phone aside and looks up at him again.

"What?" Freddie asks again.

"You," Roger says simply. "You really like this one, don't you?"

Freddie gives him a, _Duh_ look. "You know I do."

"No, I mean…" Roger fiddles with his Scrabble tiles. "You _really_ like him. I haven't seen you this bad in a while, Fred."

"This _bad_? Isn't it a _good_ thing?"

Roger nods slowly. "I hope so," he says. "I just…" He pauses and holds one of the tiles between two fingers, tapping it restlessly against another still in the rack. "I worry about you, Freddie. You've really liked guys before and they've turned out to be assholes."

"Brian's not like that," Freddie says quickly. "You _know_ he's not, Rog, you've _met_ him for God's sake!"

"Yeah," Roger shoots back. "I met the others as well. And I thought some of _those_ were fine and it turned out they _weren't_."

"You're too caught up in _one_ asshole out of—"

"It's _not_ just one asshole, Freddie," Roger cuts him off. "You _know_ it's not, _fucking hell_. And what about the _kids_ , Fred? Have you thought about what a long-term thing with this guy's gonna mean? Do you even _want_ kids?"

"Well, I don't know...maybe," Freddie says, shifting uncomfortably. "I never thought I _could_ have that, Rog. It's nice. They're good kids."

Roger huffs. "Good now. What about when you want to have a night in together and they keep barging in? Or when you're trying to go out somewhere and they're screaming the place down? Or when Brian's never available because he's got parent's evenings and school plays and football practice?"

Freddie scowls at him. "Well what a charming picture _you_ paint!" he says sarcastically.

"I'm being realistic, here. I _have_ kids, Freddie, it's _hard_. You love them to bits but it's not easy, are you ready for that? Because he comes with that, or it's no deal." Roger can hear himself and he hates the way he keeps on at Freddie about this but he just wants him to _think_ about things for once instead of diving in headfirst and getting hurt in the fallout when it's too late.

"I _know_ ," Freddie says. "I know all that. I don't think it's going to be easy, Roger—fuck knows, I know what I'm like. I'm enough to drive a _saint_ to bloody murder, it's _him_ that's going to have to put up with _me_. I'm sure I'm worse than any seven year old."

Roger shakes his head. "You're not," he says. "Don't get me wrong, you can be a right bitch when you want to be. But you just deserve _so much_ , Fred, and I don't want to lecture you—"

"Again," Freddie puts in, pointedly.

"Again," Roger concedes. "But just...why _him_?"

"I don't know. It's just him."

Roger knows he's lost, that there was never a hope of winning this battle, from the soft way Freddie says it, from the _look_ on his face. Like all the bad shit that's come before doesn't matter anymore, like he really _has_ found what he's been looking for. It's _exactly_ why Roger's so fucking worried; they've only been seeing each other for a few weeks and Freddie's already signed his life away to him.

"Well for what it's worth...I don't hate him," Roger says after a moment. "He _does_ seem alright." And he made a good coffee, and liked decent music, and, for the ten minutes Roger had spoken to him, literally _wouldn't shut the fuck up about Freddie_. He's a damn sight better than most of the men Freddie's introduced him to. Than all of them, really.

"Thank you," Freddie says sincerely. "I really think this might be it, Rog."

Roger swallows back all the protests he wants to make to that— _You barely know him_ , and _You always think that_ , and _Are you really ready to take on three kids_? But he doesn't because he's said it all before and he knows he's starting to sound like a nagging mother.

"Just be careful, Fred. Please."

"You know I will," Freddie promises. He sweeps his tiles aside and leans over the board, knocking their words everywhere as he collapses onto Roger. "Hug me, darling, or I'll cry."

" _Oof_ , Fred, you ruined the bloody game!" Roger laughs as he falls back, allowing himself to be hugged by his ridiculous friend.

"Oh, I definitely won," Freddie assures him as he gets up and Roger dusts himself off as he's supposed to be meeting friends in town very soon. "You don't have to worry about me so much, you know?"

"I know," Roger says, clapping him on the shoulder. "But if I didn't worry about you, how else would I justify my fucking hair going grey?"

"It's all that bleach you use, dear," Freddie says wisely.

"It's definitely you."

 

*** 

 

 Freddie struggles to sleep in the empty apartment, in his empty bed.

Brian hasn't replied to his last two texts and he's been trying not to dwell on it but his mind betrays him, whispers all sorts of things he _knows_ aren't true but can't help but get caught up in. Freddie _knows_ that Brian's busy because his daughter is sick and he's worried about her—Freddie's worried, too—but still as he drifts into fitful sleep he's sure it's because Brian's grown bored of him. That it's over now, they've had their fun but now it's finished and Freddie has to find a way to live with nothing but the memory.

His sleep is shallow and disturbed so the phone call wakes him easily even though the clock on his bedside table tells him it's gone two in the morning.

Freddie nearly knocks his phone flying as he scrambles for it, trying to blink his eyes open and swipe to answer at the same time. "Hello? Brian?"

"Freddie? I'm so sorry to call you so late, I just—I didn't know what else to do." He sounds fucking wrecked and Freddie sits up in bed, eyes wide.

"Is Emma alright? What's happened, darling?"

"Yeah, she's—" Brian sucks in a rattling breath and doesn't say anything for a moment. "She's okay now. They think it's just a bad case of croup but she's—God, Freddie, they had her all hooked up to this fucking... _breathing mask_ , it made it look like—" He cuts himself off and clears his throat.

"Oh, darling," Freddie whispers. "I'm so sorry, my love. Are you at the hospital?"

"Yeah," Brian sighs. "Listen...I, I wouldn't ask usually but my parents are away for the night and they need to keep her in overnight to observe to make sure she doesn't get bad again." Brian has to pause again then and Freddie waits patiently, letting him breathe through it. "I've got Jack and Lily with me, I had to drive her in—"

"Do you want me to come and get them?" Freddie offers, knowing how long it might take Brian to work up the nerve to ask what he probably considers a huge favour but to Freddie is the obvious thing. He's already out of bed, looking around for the jeans he'd kicked off earlier.

Brian catches his breath with relief. "Do you mind? I swear I wouldn't ask normally, it's just—"

"Brian, please. Of course I don't mind, the poor things don't need to spend the night in hospital and you need to focus on Emma," Freddie tells him firmly.

"Thank you so much, Freddie, I can't—" His voice quavers and drops out. He clears his throat again. "Thank you."

"Anytime, my dear. Where are you?"

Brian tells him and Freddie promises he'll be there as soon as he can before he hangs up and immediately calls an all-night taxi company to book a car.

He spends the ten minutes before it arrives hastily throwing some clothes on and digging out a t-shirt and the boxers Brian had left a few nights ago, now freshly laundered though the t-shirt's a bit creased because Freddie forgot to hang it up. He shoves them in a carrier bag and goes outside to wait for the taxi, shivering slightly because while the days are starting to get warmer, the nights have a distinct edge to them still.

He texts Roger on the car ride to let him know he's out for the night and lets Brian know he's on his way.

**I can't thank you enough, Freddie. Lily's over the moon x**

Freddie smiles down at his phone for a moment before a sudden panic envelopes him—he's never actively _looked after_ someone's children before. He's been around them, been in houses where both he and they are staying the night, played games with them and talked to them, but their parents have always either been right there or in the next room. What the fuck is he supposed to do with two whole children? On his _own_?

Oh, Christ. It's a bit late to be having that panic so Freddie tries to force it back and spends most of the journey Googling tips on a website called Mumsnet.

It's not a very long journey so he doesn't become an Expert Mum on the way, unfortunately.

Freddie talks to the receptionist to let her know why he's there and it seems Brian's already called down to warn her because she's expecting him. He's directed to sit in the surprisingly quiet waiting room while she phones upstairs for Brian.

Freddie finds a chair but soon abandons it to run a cup of coffee out of the machine nearby instead, figuring Brian could use a little pick-me-up and absolutely certain that when he comes downstairs will be the first time he's left Emma's side to get one since he got here.

His arrival is announced by an energetic call of, 'Freddie!' and the sound of little footsteps charging across the green lino floor.

"Lily, sweetheart!" Freddie greets, carefully putting the boiling hot cup down before she collides with his legs and hugs him.

He looks up to see Brian walking toward him with a far more sedate Jack at his side. Brian looks terrible, pale and red-eyed, but he smiles when he sees Freddie and pulls him into a hug that makes Lily, squished between them, giggle.

"Thank you," Brian mutters into Freddie's neck, pulling him tight against him when Lily disentangles herself to investigate the carrier bag Freddie left on the chair.

Freddie squeezes Brian around the waist and kisses his cheek. "My poor darling," he murmurs. "How is she?"

Brian shakes with the breath he lets out. "She's with a nurse," he says hoarsely. "She's okay, she had a dose of steroids to help her airways and they don't think she'll need anything else but they have to keep an eye on her. She's finally asleep but she's—Freddie she nearly stopped _breathing_ earlier, she was turning blue. I've never been so fucking scared in all my life, I thought—"

It's too terrible and he can't bring himself to say it.

"Ssh, Brian, darling, she's going to be okay, she's in the best place," Freddie tells him, kissing his cheek again and rubbing a hand up and down his back.

"I know, I know." Brian sniffs and pulls back slightly. "They said she's going to be okay, it's just cautionary now. But it was so fucking scary. I had to wake the kids up, I didn't even get them shoes," he confesses.

Freddie looks down to see that both children are wearing identical pairs of hospital slippers. "Well those aren't very stylish at _all_ ," he says, shaking his head. "We'll have to get you back home and into some proper slippers."

"I don't want any slippers," Jack says quietly. "I just want to go back to bed now, please."

Brian ruffles his hair and blinks hard. "You can, kiddo. Freddie's going to take you home, okay? And I'll be back in the morning with Emma."

Jack nods and lets his hand be passed from his father to Freddie.

"This is for you," Freddie tells Brian, handing him the coffee cup first and the bag second.

Brian immediately takes several huge gulps of coffee and seems to relax a fraction after. "God, you're perfect, you know," he says after looking in the bag and seeing fresh clothes. "Literally perfect." He leans in to give Freddie a quick but sweet kiss on the mouth.

Freddie's heart swoops. "Coffee and clean pants—you're easy to please, darling," Freddie smiles at him.

Brian manages a soft laugh and crouches to hug and kiss his children, already antsy to get back upstairs to Emma.

"We'll see you in the morning, Bri," Freddie tells him, accepting one last kiss and Brian's house key before he steps away with a child in each hand.

The taxi's still waiting for him outside and Freddie bundles both of the children into the back, clambering to get in with them. He's a bit concerned because Brian had them both in proper seats in his car and the taxi doesn't have any, but needs must.

They both fall asleep on the drive back, Lily's head lolling against the window while Jack's head lolls against Freddie's shoulder and Freddie has a mild panic over whether or not it's okay to wake them. Are you supposed to leave children asleep or is that just sleepwalkers? Will they cry if he wakes them up? They have to get inside and he knows he won't be able to carry them both.

He needn't have worried; as soon as the car comes to a stop, Jack stirs and look around, blinking sleepily. "Are we home now?" he asks, peering at Freddie as the internal light clicks on.

"That's right, my dear," Freddie tells him. "You'll be in bed before you know it."

Jack yawns hugely. "I'm not that tired any more," he says, which is a distinct lie because he looks shattered, poor thing. "Lily, wake up," he adds, nudging his sister. "We're there."

Lily bats him off with a grunt and Freddie leans over to unbuckle her seatbelt. "I'll carry her," he says. He can manage Lily on her own.

He hands the driver cash to cover the fare and he and Jack slide out of the car, Freddie leaning back in to carefully lift Lily and bundle her against his chest. She's only small but it's difficult to corral all her limbs while she's dead asleep, limp and unhelpful as he's trying to get the car door shut.

"Should I do the key?" Jack whispers, their feet crunching along the gravel to the front door. "I know how to do it."

"That would be perfect," Freddie tells him, awkwardly rearranging Lily so he can hand the key over.

Jack has to stand on his toes to reach the lock but he carefully slides the key into place and twists it, pushing against the door with his entire body to get it open.

Freddie follows him inside and pauses on the threshold, cautious in the dark until Jack flicks the lights on for him and offers Freddie a quick smile. "Should I show you where our bedrooms are?" he asks. "But you'll probably still have to carry Lil."

Freddie already knows where their bedrooms are because he's walked past them several times but he nods and follows Jack up the stairs.

"This is Lily's," Jack says, showing Freddie into Lily's pale pink room, which is something of a trip hazard with the amount of toys scattered around the place.

Freddie carefully carries her over to bed and sets her down, pulling off the ugly hospital slippers and tugging the blankets up around her. She stirs a bit and Freddie freezes but she only snuffles and turns over, curling up and breathing deeply.

"You need to put her night light on," Jack whispers, tip-toeing into the room to flick it on himself. "Or she gets scared."

Freddie steps back from the bed and smiles over at Jack, filled with a sudden and unexpected swell of emotional affection for this serious little boy, so like his father. Brian worries about Jack a lot, never sure how best to help him, how to get through to him. He acts out sometimes and Brian doesn't know how to handle it, doesn't know how to cope with his children's grief when it's an impossible thing to understand.

Freddie, who doesn't have a lot of experience with kids anyway, is never really sure how to talk to him; it feels almost like he has a miniature adult with him, not a seven year old.

"Do you have a night light, too?" Freddie asks quietly as Jack takes his hand and pulls him away, carefully pulling the door to behind him.

"Nah," Jack says, releasing Freddie and making his way to his own room.

Freddie isn't sure if Jack is _really_ like his father or if Brian just had a large hand in decorating in here, but it's very _Brian_. There's a microscope on the child-sized desk along with several books, one of those little engine kits that looks to have been abandoned halfway through and model planets hanging from the ceiling.

There's an overflowing laundry basket in the corner and Jack kicks his hospital slippers in that vague direction, giving them a slight frown. "They weren't even very comfy," he tells Freddie, pulling his already mussed covers aside and clambering into bed. "It was nice of the nurse to give them to us for free, though. I _did_ tell Dad we needed some shoes but he didn't listen."

Freddie clucks softly. "He _should_ have listened to you, darling—you're a very sensible lad." He really is; more sensible than Freddie thinks he's ever been in his entire life. "But he was very worried, I think his mind was pretty full."

"Yeah," Jack agrees tiredly. He lies back and tugs his blankets up to his chin, peering at Freddie over the top. He blinks slowly and his gaze flickers away from Freddie up toward the ceiling and he takes a deep breath. "Is...Is Emma _really_ going to be okay?" he asks quietly and sits up suddenly, knotting his hands together in his lap and twisting them nervously. "They put Mummy in a hospital like that when she got sick."

Freddie's heart lurches and his palms itch with sudden panic that he tries desperately not to show. "Oh, sweetheart," he breathes, crouching next to the bed. "She's going to be just fine, I promise. What she has is nothing like what your poor mum had, lots of babies get it. She just needs some medicine at the hospital and she'll be right back home." Freddie Googled croup in the car on the way here and he's now very glad he did, he hadn't a clue what the hell it was before that.

Jack looks away from him. "Sometimes people said my mum would be okay, as well," he says quietly. "But I knew they were just lying so I wouldn't be sad."

Fucking hell, Freddie is not at _all_ equipped to deal with this sort of talk. "Jack," he says seriously, reaching out and holding onto both of the boy's hands with one of his. "Your sister is going to be just fine. She's okay now, she's just got to stay in tonight so the doctors can keep an eye on her. Dad will bring her right back in the morning."

"Do you promise?" Jack asks, looking at Freddie with wide, young eyes.

"Of course," Freddie tells him without hesitation. He gives Jack's hands a little squeeze.

Jack seems to accept his promise because he nods and lies back down, settling in. He yawns widely and tugs the blanket tight around himself. "Will you tell Daddy to wake me up when he comes home?"

"Of course I will," Freddie says, backing away now that Jack seems content to turn in for the night. "Do you want me to turn the light off?"

Jack nods and Freddie flicks the switch and steps outside. "I'll just leave this door open a bit, so you can see the landing light," he whispers as he pulls the door to halfway.

"Thanks, Freddie," Jack replies sleepily. "Night."

"Night."

Freddie holds in his sigh of relief until he's in Brian's bedroom with the door shut, feeling like he's just—maybe, hopefully—passed a test he's been stressing over for weeks. He thinks that was a success—they're both in bed, happy enough, safe and well, with no tears and neither of them telling him they hate him and want him to stay away from their father.

Not that he thinks they really have that much vitriol in them, but Freddie desperately wants them to like him—not just for Brian, but because he likes _them_ as well—so he's been worrying about it, and Roger's words from earlier hadn't helped at all. But he _can_ do it—look at him!

It feels strange to get into Brian's bed without him. Freddie's slept in it several times now but never without Brian and it's cold and different without him there, so obviously not his own bed in his own bedroom.

Freddie pulls the covers around him and soon warms up but it takes a while to drift off.

 

 ***

 

He doesn't wake when Brian returns but he evidently does at some point in the night because when Freddie opens his eyes the next morning, the first thing he sees is Brian's mad tangle of hair right in front of his face.

It takes Freddie a moment to orient himself from there because usually when he wakes up with Brian, it's with Brian plastered against his back, doing his very best impression of an octopus while Freddie's bursting for a piss and can't get free. So this is a change, and it takes him a few seconds to realise, after sitting up a bit, that it's because Brian brought Emma to bed with him and she's on the other side of him.

Brian's usually a light sleeper but he doesn't stir even when Freddie moves, though it's hardly surprising. Freddie doesn't think he can have gotten more than a couple of hours sleep so far at best. The rest of the house sounds quiet and it's a Saturday so Freddie's in no rush to get up; he lies back down, careful not to jostle too much in case he does disturb Brian, and turns to face him, just basking in his presence.

It's probably pathetic how badly Freddie misses him when he's not around but he feels it so deeply, doesn't even particularly want conversation or attention from Brian but just to be _with_ him and that's enough. He smiles with it now, smiles to himself up at the ceiling as he lays there and listens to Brian's slow, steady breathing, feels the warmth of his body heat under the blankets, can still smell hospital lingering on him.

It's too soon to say it and Freddie's terrified to, anyway, but he loves him. He loves him properly, not the way the songs sing about it but the way people swear it to each other in quiet moments like this, in their heads and in their hearts and in the way a small touch to the back of someone's elbow can somehow be more intimate than the deepest kiss.

Freddie leans over, just a bit, and presses a kiss to Brian's shoulder-blade. Just because he wants to. Because he can.

It wakes Brian up.

He jolts awake with a groan and Freddie lays his hand on his shoulder, feeling horribly guilty. "Sorry, darling," he whispers quickly. "I'm so sorry, did I wake you?"

"Freddie?" Brian's eyes don't open all the way and he squints at Freddie in the half-light, carefully rolling over to look at him. "Mornin'," he grunts, closing his eyes again and giving a little sigh. He's clearly still exhausted.

"Go back to sleep," Freddie says quietly, rubbing his shoulder. "The kids aren't even awake yet."

"They will be soon," Brian mumbles. "I should get up."

"I can handle them," Freddie assures him. "Go back to sleep, Bri, you need it."

Brian doesn't argue with him, just blindly reaches out to pull him close, his breathing evening out in moments.

Freddie peers over Brian's shoulder to check that Emma's okay, hemmed in by a wall of pillows, before he relaxes in the loose embrace of Brian's arm.

He doesn't drift back off but dozes a bit, warm and content, until he hears one of the kids' bedroom doors and footsteps padding along the corridor to the bathroom.

As though he has a sixth sense for it, Brian's eyes open immediately at the sound but Freddie's already extricating himself and slipping out of bed.

"Go back to sleep," he says again. "I've got it."

And he thinks he actually might.

He steals Brian's frankly hideous dressing gown (Freddie notes it as a present idea for next time he's out shopping) and opens the door, discovering that it's Lily who's awoken first.

"Freddie!" she greets him delightedly, leaping at him. "I had a dream you were here!"

"Then you must be a fortune-teller, my dear, because I _am_ here," Freddie says, adjusting his grip on her so he can take her downstairs without tripping over his own feet. "Why don't you try looking in the future to see what you can see for breakfast?"

Lily giggles and closes her eyes. "Hmmmm," she hums loudly. "I see...pancakes! Like Matilda."

Freddie's heart sinks a tiny bit. He hasn't the faintest idea how to make pancakes but if this little girl wants them, he'll fucking well learn.

"You _are_ a fortune teller!" Freddie gasps at her, carrying her into the kitchen and depositing her on a chair. "That's exactly what I was thinking of making."

He opens his phone and quickly Googles how in God's name one makes pancakes, sifting through a few recipes until he finds one that's as basic as they come. "Flour, milk, eggs," he reads out, prompting Lily to slip off her chair to help him find the ingredients.

It seems simple enough but Brian doesn't have a scale so Freddie has to eyeball it, which it turns out he isn't very good at doing.

Lily stands close and watches intently as he carefully tries to tip flour...bit more...a bit more...into the bowl, only the bag must be quite old because the paper's thin and worn and when Freddie tips it just so the entire thing just collapses and empties the whole lot in.

There's a big puff of powder which makes Lily shriek with laughter, and that blows more of the stuff around until Freddie's mouth feels pasted with it and he has to cough a few times.

"Oh, bollocks," he mutters, trying to brush flour out of his hair and open the kitchen window at the same time while Lily continues giggling away, drawing patterns in the white dust now coating the counter.

"Well," Freddie says, not to be defeated. "I guess we'll just have to make lots."

"I'll eat one hundred," Lily tells him seriously.

Freddie sets about cracking eggs, which Lily helps with, joined by Jack when he wanders in and asks what they're doing. He's more than eager to help, the both of them enthusiastically smashing away at the eggs until the side is covered in bits of shell and burst yolk while Freddie frantically tries to stir the mixture together.

It doesn't go very well at all until he remembers that he's supposed to add milk as well and pours half the bottle in.

His arm feels like it's about to fall off by the time the mixture looks sort of roughly similar to how it looks in the photo on the website. "Right," he says, opening several cupboards and getting pancake batter over all the handles while he looks for the one that has a frying pan in. "Cooking time!"

He sets the pan on the hob and Jack manages to produce a spatula from somewhere and drags a chair over to help, then has to grab another one when Lily claims his.

It takes Freddie a few minutes to figure out how the hell to turn the hob on (because it's about thirty years old and doesn't just have a _button_ like a normal one, typical Brian) and he holds the pan steady so Jack and Lily can pour some of the mixture out together.

They pour rather a lot and some of it slops over the side of the pan onto the oven, which Freddie doesn't think to worry about until a while later when it starts to smell strongly of burning in the kitchen.

"Oh, f—fff _udge_!" He only just manages to catch himself in time before he swears in front of them, yanking the pan off the heat and grimacing down at the charred black mess of what was once a golden-coloured creamy batter and would now probably make a half decent charcoal pencil.

"Quick, pass me a wooden spoon!"

Lily jumps to fetch him one and Freddie uses it to flick the would-be pancake away from the heat, praying that the smoke alarm doesn't go off and wake Brian and Emma. Thank God he has the window open.

"I think it's okay," Jack says carefully, eyeing the hob. "We'll have to not spill it next time."

Freddie nods and puts the pan back. "No harm done," he assures them both, trying to shake the pancake around a bit to loosen it up. It can only _very_ generously be called a pancake, if he's being honest. Some of it is still entirely raw while other bits look lumpy and disgusting, browning with heat. It doesn't look at all like any pancake Freddie's ever eaten before but he's sure it just needs a little more cooking time and it'll be fine.

"It's not flat enough," Lily points out.

Jack helpfully uses the spatula to start slapping it down, which only succeeds in nearly ripping the thing in two and covering the partially cooked bits—and Freddie, who's still stood in splashing distance—in more wet mixture.

"Oh, whoops," Jack says, glancing up at Freddie with an apologetic little giggle. "I think I made it worse."

"It's fine," Freddie insists. "It just needs to be flipped." People flip pancakes, that's how you cook them.

He ushers the children out of the way so he won't accidentally burn them or brain them with the frying pan and prepares himself. "Right, on three…"

"One—two— _three_!" Neither of them are quiet as they shout a countdown, oblivious to their sleeping father and sister upstairs, and Freddie tosses the pancake on cue.

Half of it does successfully come away from the pan, launched into the air by what is—in hindsight—a bit of an over-enthusiastic toss from Freddie. It hits the light above him and flops back down onto the floor with a wet slap.

Jack and Lily _scream_ with laughter and Freddie gasps in horror because Brian's light fitting is now covered in partially-cooked pancake smears and the rest is on the _floor_ and it's at that moment that Brian skids in, Emma on his hip, and stops dead to take in the scene before him.

He'd woken to the sound of a commotion downstairs, all three of their voices, and the alarming smell of _burning_ which had drawn him to the kitchen post-haste but whatever he'd been expecting, this isn't it.

His kitchen is a warzone, for one thing. There are bowls _everywhere_ , the fridge door is open and the butter's on the floor, the milk bottle is standing half-empty on the side with the top off and there's flour on literally every surface he can see, including what looks to be every square inch of Freddie and his children, who are all desperately in need of a bath.

Freddie has batter all over his—actually, _Brian's_ —dressing gown, swiped across his cheek, and Brian can definitely see bits in both Lily's and Jack's hair. He can also see that his best wooden spoon is now black on the end, apparently burned, and there's _something_ on the floor at Freddie's feet which looks a lot like a specimen he grew in biology class once.

The three of them have identical guilty looks on their faces when they spot him. "Did we wake you?" Freddie asks worriedly.

"No, Emma was already stirring." Brian steps carefully into the kitchen, eyeing the ceiling suspiciously in case anything drips off of it. "What on _Earth_ are you doing?"

"We're making pancakes!" Lily says brightly.

" _Trying_ to make pancakes," Jack corrects, snorting. "Look, Freddie got it on the ceiling!"

Jack even points, in case Brian could ever miss the mess of it.

Freddie winces. "I'll clean it off," he promises as Brian straps Emma into her high chair and comes over to take a closer look.

Freddie's watching him nervously and Brian can tell he's on edge, clearly expecting him to be angry, so he gives him a good morning kiss before he says anything. "Can you even reach?" he teases, throwing an arm around Freddie's shoulders and giving him a playful shake.

Freddie immediately relaxes under his arm. "With a chair," he allows, relieved.

"You could use Lily's hair as a mop," Brian suggests and Lily gives an indignant squeal and leaps out of the way as Brian pretends to swipe at her.

"Use Freddie's!" she cries, hiding behind a chair.

Brian gives Freddie a once-over. "I think Freddie's got enough on him as it is. Why don't you sit down and I'll finish up?" he suggests, giving Freddie a gentle push toward the table.

Jack's already sat down in the chair beside Emma, driving a car he's managed to find on the floor somewhere along the tray for her. "Is Emma okay now, Dad?" he asks, glancing up. "Did the doctor say she was okay?"

"Doctor said she's just fine," Brian assures him, clearing a space on the side and making the (probably wise, given the amount of egg shell he can see in it) decision to scrap Freddie's pancake batter and start again. "We need to be a bit gentle with her today, keep her nice and calm, but they let her come home very early this morning."

Jack frowns a bit. "Why didn't you tell us when she was okay?"

Brian turns his attention away from breakfast to give it entirely to Jack. "I didn't want to wake you, sweetheart, especially after last night. You two were so brilliant, I was thinking we could do something special today, to say a big thank you for being so brave and helpful."

Jack's expression clears at once. "What like?"

"What do you want to do?" Brian asks, beating more eggs in a new bowl.

"Let's go to the moon!" Lily suggests giddily.

"The planetarium?" Jack asks hopefully.

Freddie catches Brian's eye without meaning to and flushes a bit, staring hard at a fleck of pancake mix on the window over the sink.

"The _planetarium_?" Brian repeats. "I'd love that, but we go there all the time. Don't you want to do something special?"

Jack hums as he thinks it over. "You said Emma has to stay calm," he says thoughtfully. "So we can't do anything _very_ exciting."

They toss ideas around over breakfast—Brian's pancakes look a _lot_ better than Freddie's, once he manages to find a new bag of flour hidden away in the odds-and-ends cupboard full of various baking supplies that rarely see the light of day.

Eventually, after Brian has headed off at least five different arguments between his two children who, in almost all cases, want to do the _exact_ opposite thing, they decide on the zoo.

That settled, not even pancakes will keep them at the table and they both rush off to get dressed with no time to waste.

"Wash your hands and faces, please!" Brian calls after them, not entirely sure if he's heard over the beating of their feet on the stairs.

Freddie laughs. "I think you might need to hose them down, darling—I really am so sorry, I'm sure that'll come right off the ceiling."

"Don't apologise, Fred, honestly," Brian waves him off. "I can't thank you enough for last night, I don't know what I'd have done without you." He leaves Emma to mulch her pancake between her fists for a minute and tugs Freddie to his feet so he can steal a moment with him while the older kids aren't about, pulling him against his chest and holding tight.

Freddie sighs against him and loops his arms around his waist. "I'm so glad she's okay, Bri, I can't even imagine how scared you must've been."

"It was fucking awful," Brian agrees, his breath stirring Freddie's hair. "Honestly, knowing you were here waiting for me was all that was getting me through."

He loosens his grip on Freddie a bit, just enough to be able to kiss him, then shuffles him back against the counter so he can kiss him _properly_.

It's probably not the time for a heavy make-out session but Brian will take what he can get; he's missed Freddie horribly, even though it's only been a couple of days since he saw him properly and less than that since the flying visit at the hospital. He even missed him last night as he crawled into bed, missed Freddie's bright eyes and shy smile because he'd already been fast asleep by the time Brian got back.

Freddie doesn't protest as Brian slips his tongue into his mouth, just clutches him closer and lets out a tiny moan that makes Brian _want_ and he has to pull back before he gets carried away.

He rests their foreheads together for a brief moment while he collects himself and quickly derails his mind from the road it'd been about to go down before his cock can get too interested in proceedings.

"Will you stay over tonight?" Brian asks before he can think better and talk himself out of it.

Freddie _beams_. "I'd love to."

Brian kisses him again (and once more after that, for luck) before he manages to detach himself.

"I'd better go and see what trouble those children of mine are causing upstairs," he says fondly, fishing Emma out of her high chair to take her with him. "Bathroom's yours if you want it."

Freddie does want it and locks himself in there while Brian's trying to negotiate with Lily about what clothes are suitable for a day out at the zoo, i.e. _not_ the Halloween costume from two years ago that she's suddenly decided is the only outfit that will do.

When he gets out he can only assume that Brian lost that particular argument as Lily streaks past Freddie wearing a lion costume that's far too small for her, inches of wrist and ankle showing and the hood barely able to come up over her head.

Freddie steps into Brian's bedroom and arches an eyebrow at him.

Brian sighs. "You have to pick your battles."

It's almost another entire hour before they're all actually ready to leave, after Jack spends ten minutes deliberating on whether or not to bring a toy and Brian and Lily have another battle of wills over whether or not she can wear her princess dress-up heels.

Brian, to his credit, wins that one and Lily trudges to the car in a sensible pair of trainers, though her lion costume is now adorned with a purple tutu.

Freddie is quickly learning, being with Brian, that one of the things about kids is how much more _time_ everything takes. Freddie's usually late to, well, everything, but that's deliberate more often than not. With Brian and the children it's because there always seems to be something else that needs to be done or remembered or packed before they can ever leave, but they get there eventually.

At the gate, Brian insists on buying Freddie's ticket even though he paid for their last date so Freddie buys him a coffee while he's waiting for him outside the toilets (Jack decided he needed to go roughly three minutes after pulling away from home).

Brian accepts it gratefully when he reappears, thanking him with a quick but unselfconscious kiss that means the _world_ to Freddie.

"I could get used to this," Brian tells him, sipping from the take-away cup with a tiny grin. "You're a wonderful coffee-provider."

Freddie would _happily_ be Brian's coffee provider for approximately _forever_ so he's ridiculously pleased by that. He wishes he could hold Brian's hand as they wander along the paths, following Jack and Lily's somewhat suspect reading of the map the zoo provided them with, but he's pushing Emma in her stroller so it's impossible.

He sticks close, though, and every time they stop, Brian's arm winds its way around his waist and they stand together like that while the kids creep closer to the enclosures and peer through at the animals.

Brian snaps pictures of them laughing delightedly at monkeys and tigers and Freddie can't help but snap pictures of Brian laughing delightedly at the penguins. They cross a mini-milestone and take a photo together, heads bent together in the petting zoo, Brian grinning wide and happy and Freddie posing with a wide-eyed pout.

Brian makes it his phone background as soon as they stop for lunch and Freddie feels so _cherished_ it nearly makes him tearful.

It's the most sweet and perfect afternoon Freddie thinks he's ever spent. Brian's relaxed despite pausing every few minutes to bend over Emma in her pushchair to make sure she's okay and Lily and Jack are both nearly vibrating with excited energy, spending ages and ages looking at each animal, deciding on names for each one they see (this takes a long time in certain enclosures; Freddie thinks they might have been stood outside the giant fish tank for a solid hour, and Lily calls one of them _Freddie_ which would have been sweet but it's frankly the most fucking hideous fish Freddie's ever seen and he's mildly offended).

After they've looked at everything Brian makes tracks for the adventure playground, which sends the kids into an excited frenzy even the big male lion's roaring (they'd called that one Mufasa) hadn't managed to achieve.

He finds a bench to park he and Freddie on while the older children race toward the big climbing frame. Emma's fallen asleep in the pushchair and Brian leans back on the bench with a little sigh, watching Jack and Lily scramble up the rope ladders.

"They've had a good day," Freddie says, following Brian's gaze. "I think you're definitely forgiven for waking them last night."

Brian gives a gentle laugh. "I hope so," he says. "They'll probably cost me a small fortune in the gift shop first, though."

He stretches his ridiculously long legs out in front of him and casually takes Freddie's hand in his, lifting it to his mouth to kiss his knuckles. " _Hopefully_ they'll tire themselves out here and go to bed early tonight," he says meaningfully, catching Freddie's eye, and Freddie prays that's true.

"Oh?" Freddie plays dumb. "Got plans for tonight, have you, darling?"

"Mhmm," Brian hums peaceably, letting their hands drop back down between them. "Big plans for you. Hope _you're_ not too tired."

Freddie's stomach swoops at that. "I'll stay off the climbing frame, then."

Brian laughs and pulls him in for a kiss that he has to force himself not to deepen.

It's difficult when Freddie responds so sweetly, mouth opening so readily for him—it would be far too easy to forget they're in public, to let his hand wander—

"Dad! Will you come and push me?"

They break apart with a quick, self-conscious laugh and Brian is very pleased to note that Freddie's a little flushed.

"Coming, sweetheart," Brian calls over, untangling his hand from Freddie's and getting up. "Do you mind keeping an eye on Emma?"

"Of course not," Freddie says at once, smiling up at him.

" _Dad_!"

"I'm coming!" Brian laughs exasperatedly, quickly bending down to give Freddie one more mini goodbye kiss before loping over to where Lily's sat impatiently on a swing.

Freddie pulls Emma's pushchair a little closer, checking she's still sleeping peacefully before watching Brian start to push Lily on the swing.

Jack comes over as well and they're all laughing as Brian plays about with them, alternating pushing the both of them and running back and front, ducking under their feet, play-acting that they nearly hit him until they're both screaming with giggles.

Freddie can't help laughing too, it's catching, and as he sits there in the warm sun, watching this little family that have so readily welcomed him in, he can't help but think that if this was his lot in life, he would be quite, quite content with that.

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so you all know, Brian's ex-wife in this is now called Kirsty, I hope nobody's too jarred by that but I felt a bit weird using a real name when I'd killed the poor girl off!
> 
> If anyone wants to talk about Queen or Brian and Freddie or just chat feel free to come and find me over on [tumblr](https://freddie-mercurial.tumblr.com), my url is freddie-mercurial :D

 

 

Freddie wakes up the next morning aching literally all over, not actually sure he’s able to _move_ because his muscles have gone so tight.His thighs are still burning, he probably needs physio-fucking-therapy after last night, not that he’s complaining.Brian had more than made good on his promise; Freddie doesn’t particularly like going a few days without sex but it turns out Brian likes it even less. 

“Morning,” Brian, already awake, whispers to him when he realises Freddie’s no longer sleeping.  He rolls over to kiss him, at first just a sweet good-morning kiss but it becomes more than that very quickly and Freddie puts a hand up to catch Brian’s jaw and give him a light push.

“Oh, don’t get me all worked up, darling, I don’t think I can take any more just yet,” he says regretfully.

“I’m sure you could,” Brian purrs, kissing down his neck and along his shoulder, tugging the blanket away to reveal Freddie’s chest and kissing along there, too.“If you really tried.”

Freddie swallows and tips his head back against his pillow with a tiny, pleasurable sigh.  His cock is starting to get interested in proceedings but Brian’s fully there already, Freddie can feel him against his thigh.  He would fucking _love_ to go a quick round before breakfast, there’s nothing he usually likes more, but if they do he’ll be sitting funny all day and it’s a Sunday so he plans on doing a _lot_ of sitting.

“Hold on a second, darling,” Freddie says and Brian stops at once, pulling back.

He evidently thinks Freddie is a hard no so his eyebrows jump when he feels Freddie’s hand on him and he lets out a little groan when Freddie slips beneath the sheets.

“My poor arse can’t take any more just now,” Freddie says, muffled, “but the rest of me can.”

His breath feels amazing against Brian’s cock but it’s nothing compared to his mouth, especially as Brian can’t even see him under the blankets, he can just feel him, hot and wet and perfect.  He has to bite his lip to keep quiet.  

Freddie is _particularly_ good at this and seems to have a preternatural sense for _exactly_ what Brian wants so it doesn’t usually take long.  Brian leans back to enjoy it with a deep, contented sigh, just thinking how much he fucking _loves_ Sunday mornings these days when he hears a bedroom door down the corridor slam open.

Freddie chokes and, to Brian’s dismay, pulls off, fighting to free himself of the covers with a hissed, “Did you lock the door?”He’s flushed and his lips are all wet and pink, he looks absolutely fucking gorgeous, this is _torture_. 

“Fuck—yeah, yeah it’s locked,” Brian says quickly, trying to adjust back into Dad Brain as one of the kids hammers on the (thankfully safely locked last night) door.

“Daddy?”It’s Lily.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“I’m hungry.”

Brian closes his eyes and lets out his breath.Just one blowjob, that’s all he wanted. 

Freddie’s sniggering as silently as he can, wiping his mouth off on the back of his hand, all thoughts of sex regretfully abandoned.

Brian tries not to groan; it’s not Lily’s fault.“Okay, I’ll come down and make breakfast in a sec, alright?”

“Okay!”Her reply is bright and cheerful, far too awake for whatever time of the morning it is, and they hear her skip off down the stairs.

“Do we have time?” Freddie asks.“I can make it a quick one,” he adds, waggling his eyebrows just as the baby monitor crackles to life as Emma wakes up, too. 

“I think that’s a no,” Brian laughs wryly.He rubs his eyes to try and dispel some of the sleep, sitting up and giving Freddie a gentle push to get him off his legs.

Freddie rolls aside easily, leaning up on his elbow.“Do you want me to make breakfast while you get Emma?” he offers.

“Absolutely not,” Brian says as he gets out of bed and hunts around for something to put on, pausing to point at Freddie.“ _You_ are never allowed in my kitchen again except to sit nicely at the table and not touch anything.”

Freddie snorts. 

Brian grins at him as he yanks on jogging bottoms and an old t-shirt seeing as his bathrobe is now in the wash, still covered in pancake batter.“You coming or sleeping a bit more?”

“I’ll just get dressed and be down in a moment, darling.”

Brian nods and blows him a kiss before he whirls out of the room to collect Emma and head downstairs.   

Freddie allows himself one (quite long) moment of just flopping back in bed and resting his eyes before he hauls himself up onto his feet.His thighs protest but it’s not too bad once he starts moving and stretches a bit.

His clothes are currently in Brian’s laundry hamper so Freddie does what he usually does while he’s here and just steals more of Brian’s, thinking that he should really start bringing an overnight bag with him or something because very soon Brian’s not going to have anything left.Not that Freddie would mind that, actually, but they probably shouldn’t scar the kids for life if at all avoidable.

When he arrives in the kitchen all three children are at the table with breakfast while Brian leans against the counter drinking coffee and scrolling on his phone.

Both Jack and Lily have their toys from the gift shop yesterday with them, Lily’s stuffed lion on the table with its face in her bowl of cereal while she eats around it and Jack with a bright green soft snake wrapped around him like a scarf.

“There you are,” Brian says, looking up when Freddie shuffles through the door.“Tea?Jack, get that snake off from around your neck, you could strangle yourself, I won’t tell you again.”He flicks the kettle on and tucks his phone into his pocket before turning back.“And that lion’s going to get filthy, Lily, why don’t you sit him nicely on the chair?”

“She’s a _she_ ,” Lily corrects him at once.

“He has a mane,” Brian points out.

“She’s still a lady.”Lily is not to be swayed.

Freddie grins over at Brian, who looks like he’s struggling not to explain how that isn’t possible.“Very progressive of her,” Freddie tells him, pointedly.“I think she’s marvellous, what’s she called, Lil?”

“Bob.”

She’s deadly serious so Freddie turns into Brian to cover up his quick laugh.

“That’s a boy’s name,” Jack joins in, finally uncurling the snake from around his neck and setting it on the table instead.

“She’s a GIRL!” Lily shouts, banging her hand on the table. 

“Hey, calm down, young lady,” Brian says sternly.“Jack, don’t wind her up.”

“I’m not!” Jack protests.“It _is_ a boy’s name!You even _said_ it’s a boy lion!”

“She’s _NOT A BOY_!” Lily shrieks.

The noise startles Emma who immediately wails, banging her own hands on her high chair, sending dry Cheerios flying in every direction.

Lily starts to cry as well, snatching her lion off the table and hugging her close.

“Oh, for fuck sake,” Brian mutters. 

Freddie takes over making the tea while Brian distracts Emma with the toy she got at the zoo, a plastic giraffe that she mostly just chews.

“Lily, come on, stop it now,” Brian says loudly.“We all know she’s a girl.”

“Jack doesn’t!”

Brian shoots Jack a helpless look and Jack sighs dramatically.  “ _Fine,_ she’s a girl,” he relents.

Lily scowls at him for an extra moment before deciding she’s appeased and settling back down, Bob right back up on the table with her face getting soggy in the Cheerio milk once again.

Brian sighs and evidently decides that’s not a battle he’s going to win because he doesn’t bring it up again, just makes a mental note to put that thing in the wash the first chance he gets.

He tips more Cheerios onto Emma’s tray and scoops cut up bananas and apples onto it as well, sectioning off a few for the others a moment before Jack opens his mouth to ask for some.

Freddie’s just handed him a fresh cup of coffee when the phone rings and Brian closes his eyes for a second.  “ _One_ moment of peace,” he sighs.  “That’s all I want, just one bloody moment…”  He’s still muttering to himself as he hunts down the landline phone, disappearing out into the hallway and finding it in, of all places, one of his shoes.

“Hello?”

The moment Brian’s distracted by the call, Jack turns to Freddie with an all-too-innocent look on his face.  “Freddie, please can I have some chocolate?” he asks sweetly.

Freddie hesitates.“Uh…”

“ _Please_!” Lily chimes in.

“Dad always lets us,” Jack assures him.

Freddie’s not so sure about that, Brian’s quite strict on sweets.“Why don’t you wait for your dad to come back?” he suggests.“He won’t be long, it’s probably a salesman or something.”

“What’s a salesman?” Lily asks immediately.

“I’m _hungry_ though!” Jack protests.“There’s some in the fridge.Should I just get it?”

“No, wait,” Freddie says, worrying at his lip.Jack’s already walking over to the fridge to help himself.“Bri?” Freddie calls, opening the door to the hall and sticking his head out.

Brian looks up at him expectantly, pausing his conversation.

“Uh, are the children allowed to have chocolate?” he asks.

“Definitely not!” Brian says at once.“It’s first thing in the morning.If you’re both good,” he adds, raising his voice, “you can have some later.What?No, Mum, I was talking to—yes, he is.Yeah he did. _Mum_!”

Freddie arches his eyebrows at Brian, who just shakes his head at him and rolls his eyes.

Freddie leaves him to it and ducks back into the kitchen, shooting Jack a look of betrayal.“I’d have been in trouble with your dad if I’d said yes!”

Jack laughs.“Dad won’t tell you off,” he says confidently.“He said we can have some later, I heard him.Did you hear him, Lil?”

“Yep!”Content with that promise, Lily finishes up her Cheerios with only minimal feeding to the lion teddy before shooting off with all the rush and bustle of a businesswoman late for an important meeting.

Jack follows before Brian returns from his phone call, leaving just Freddie in the kitchen with Emma.She seems pretty content to continue mushing up banana and occasionally eating bits so Freddie lets her be and puts the breakfast things in the sink, turning the tap on them and squirting them with what turns out to be _way_ too much washing-up liquid because the sink is soon full of a veritable tower of bubbles. 

Freddie swears as quietly as he can and turns off the taps, frantically trying to disperse them a bit but they don’t really disappear, they just break up and leave littler bubbles fucking _everywhere_.God, he just isn’t the sort of man who’s ever meant to be let loose in a kitchen.

Emma thinks it’s _hilarious_ and starts giggling madly as bubbles fly and float on the air, drifting as far as the table.She throws her hands out for them but doesn’t have a hope of actually reaching them which is evidently the _end of the world_ because she starts screaming.

“Oh God, don’t cry!”

Freddie dithers for a moment before lifting her up and bouncing her a bit which works like a charm, only a moment later she makes dead eye contact with Freddie and presses one sticky, banana-filled palm right against his cheek.

Freddie’s eyes go wide with horror but he fights every instinct in him that tells him to put her the fuck down and clean that shit off his face and carries on rocking her so she won’t start crying again. 

Out in the hallway, Brian makes hasty goodbyes to his mother and hurries back to the kitchen just in time to hear Freddie say, “Well, _thank you_ , darling, banana’s very good for the skin, you know.”

He opens the door and has to take a moment to just appreciate the sight before him.Freddie’s stood with Emma in his arms, yellowy goo smeared across his cheek but currently being ignored in favour of leaning over the sink so she can stick her hands in the mountain of bubbles that have somehow been created in Brian’s absence.

He’s not really surprised; he’s starting to learn that whenever he leaves Freddie alone in his kitchen, he should expect to be welcomed back with some kind of disaster and in all honesty, he doesn’t mind at all.He’d happily welcome disasters for the rest of his life as long as they were of the Freddie sort.

“Oh, hello darling,” Freddie greets him with a grin.“We’re doing face masks.Banana mush and Fairy liquid, it’s all the rage on Instagram.”

Brian tuts and relieves Freddie of his daughter so he can clean his face off.“I’ve told her, no Instagram until she’s thirteen,” he says with a grin, jiggling Emma on his hip.He sticks his finger in the bubbles from the sink and bops her nose with some which makes her blink and laugh.“Dare I ask?” he asks Freddie, jerking his head to indicate the sink.

“I thought I’d wash up for you, my dear, but I think I put too much Fairy liquid in,” Freddie confesses. 

“I should think you bloody well did!” Brian laughs, catching sight of the now half-empty bottle on the side.  It had been nearly full when he used it last night.  

“Oh, I already told you I’m no good in the kitchen,” Freddie says airily. 

Brian doesn’t refute that because it’s absolutely true and Freddie should never be allowed near anyone’s kitchen, ever. 

He puts Emma down so she can crawl around before he tugs Freddie away from the sink and takes over, gently batting the bubbles down until he can use the water.“So, that was my mum on the phone,” he says after a few moments, glancing sidelong at Freddie.“She heard you in the background.She uh, she wants you to come to dinner this afternoon, she does a roast usually.”

A few weeks ago, that thought had filled Freddie with horror and Brian’s watching him carefully now, clearly expecting that, but Freddie just nods slowly.He’s nervous, don’t get him wrong, but he intends to hold onto Brian for as long as he can, forever if possible.Family comes with that.And his mother had been lovely.“I’ve never actually met someone’s parents before,” Freddie says, biting his lip.“Will your dad be alright?”

Brian nods.“He’ll be fine, especially with Mum there.He’s not…”Brian sighs.“He’s not really _happy_ about it all but he’s accepted it, by now.”

“Yes but have you ever shoved it in his face quite this blatantly?” Freddie points out.“I come across rather _gay_ , darling, I don’t know if you’ve noticed?”

Brian’s mouth curls around a tiny grin.“I _had_ , actually,” he says, giving Freddie a _look_ that takes him right back upstairs to the bedroom.“He’ll be fine.If he’s not, we’ll leave.”Simple as that.

“I don’t want to cause an issue…”

“You won’t,” Brian says firmly.“This is something he _has_ to accept, whether he likes it or not.It’s who I am.You’re part of that.”

“ _Proof_ of that,” Freddie says.He’s seen his fair share of homophobia; a lot of people _think_ they’re fine with it until they actually have to face it.

“Well it’s about time he saw some proof,” Brian replies.

Freddie goes still.“Hold on, have you ever taken a man home to them before?”

Brian hesitates, hands still immersed in the sink, before he shakes his head. 

“Oh Christ,” Freddie says, feeling a new wave of sickly nerves come over him.“Aren’t _you_ nervous?”

Brian turns to him then and makes a face.“A bit,” he admits.“But I want you to meet them, I’m—I’m serious about this, Fred.About you.”

Freddie swallows and has to blink a few times before he can meet Brian’s gaze.“So am I,” he says quietly.“I’ll come.”

Brian bends down to give him a swift kiss on the mouth.“Thank you,” he says, soft and sincere.“Does this mean I can officially call you my boyfriend?”

“You absolutely can,” Freddie says giddily. 

Brian’s grin is shy but wide enough to expose both sharp points of his teeth and he’s about to kiss Freddie again when the tell-tale clang of Emma trying to climb the baby-gate on the bottom of the stairs rings out and he has to run to catch her.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Freddie spends the rest of the morning in a state of low-grade _terror_ waiting for lunchtime.Brian’s not very good with timings in general so Freddie has no idea when they’re actually going to be leaving, which makes it worse.Brian says ‘around lunch’ but that could be anywhere between half-eleven and three in the afternoon, depending on when Brian remembers to begin the routine of getting the kids ready to leave the house, which can easily take up an hour on a bad day.

The morning is busy but it doesn’t seem to help; nerves gnaw away at his insides just as well while he’s stood in the kitchen watching Brian wash up as they do while he’s helping Lily paint still lifes of her toys.

“Yours is so good!” Lily gushes, sticking her head right in front of Freddie’s face to get a good look at his paper.“How do you do that?”

“Years of practice, my dear,” Freddie laughs.“I love yours, actually.You’ve got quite the eye for colour.”The colour _brown_ , mostly—while the toys are a selection of colours mostly in the pink/purple sort of category, a lot of Lily’s artwork is a green-y brown that Freddie honestly doesn’t know how she created when he _saw_ her splash on bucketloads of pink, but that’s art for you. 

“You can have it, if you want,” Lily offers generously.

Freddie gives an appropriately awed gasp.“Really?Will you sign it?”

“What’s that?”

“Where you write your name at the bottom,” Freddie tells her, pointing to one corner of the page.

Lily writes her name right across the bottom of the picture in five inch high letters rather than the small, neat signature Freddie had been envisioning, but he loves it all the same.

“Are you sure you don’t want to give this to Daddy?” Freddie asks, carefully picking the paper up.It’s sopping wet with the amount of paint on it and he quickly puts it back down, hoping they haven’t destroyed Brian’s kitchen table while he’s been busy helping Jack with his homework in the other room. 

“No!It’s for you.I’m going to paint another one for Daddy.”

She does, painting like a mad thing, pages and pages—so many Freddie has to duck into the study to ask Brian for more paper. 

“More?” he asks, looking up in surprise.“I gave her about a hundred sheets!”

“Yes, well, your fridge is going to be very well wallpapered after today, I think,” Freddie tells him, amused. 

“Bloody hell,” Brian laughs.“We’re about done here anyway, we should probably get going if we’re going to make lunch.”

Freddie’s stomach lurches but he nods as Brian gets up, collecting Emma from where she’d been playing with a giant jigsaw puzzle on the floor.Jack zips his pencil case and packs up his schoolbag.

Freddie deliberately doesn’t move out of the doorway as Brian approaches, smirking up at him as he’s forced to turn side-on to get past him and of course can’t help but lean down and give him a kiss as he does so. 

“Lil!” Brian calls as he walks into the hallway.“Can you get your shoes on, please?It’s time to go to Granny and Grandad’s.”

“Is Freddie coming?” she asks at once, skipping out into the hall to eye Freddie suspiciously, like she thinks he’s going to slyly slip away any moment now.

“Yes, Freddie’s coming,” Brian tells her, opening the hall cupboard to try and hunt down shoes.“Where are your trainers?”

“I don’t want to wear trainers!” comes Lily’s instant response. 

Brian shoots Freddie a look of, _Lord, grant me patience_ and Freddie snorts and takes Emma from him so he can look in the cupboard for the very specific pair of wellies Lily decides she wants to wear.

By the time he’s found them, Jack’s disappeared upstairs and Freddie’s pretty sure Emma’s nappy is wet.By the time Brian’s dealt with _that_ , Lily’s disappeared upstairs too.

“Jack!  Lily!  Come _down_ , we need to leave, we’re going to be late!” Brian shouts up at them, suddenly remembering that he doesn’t have his own shoes on and abandoning the hallway to look for those instead.

“They’re upstairs!” Freddie calls after him, rolling his eyes at Emma, who of course doesn’t understand the gesture but Freddie’s certain she understands on a fundamental level given that Brian is her father and she has to live with this every single day. 

Lily and Jack make it downstairs before Brian does (Lily’s no longer in the wellies Brian dug out for her and has elected to wear her trainers after all) but they do, eventually, all make it into the car.

Brian’s parents don’t live far; they’re nearly there when Freddie suddenly panics and demands Brian detour to the nearest shop so he can run in and buy some flowers.

“You don’t need to buy flowers, Fred,” Brian tells him, though he’s already changing course—he’s not very good at denying Freddie anything, if he’s being honest with himself.

Somehow (Brian suspects through sheer virtue of being _Freddie_ ) he manages to find an absolutely gorgeous bouquet at an express shop and a decent bottle of wine and he seems a tiny bit calmer once he has them in his lap.

“Don’t be so nervous,” Brian says to him as they hit a red light, leaning over to squeeze his hand.“It’ll be fine, I promise.”

“I know, I know,” Freddie says, looking dead ahead and rather as though he’s headed for the gallows, not Sunday lunch.  “I just...I really want them to like me.”  It’s a struggle to admit that out loud but he doesn’t mind, because it’s Brian.

“They’re going to love you,” Brian assures him.He thinks, _I do_ , but stops himself from saying it aloud.Now’s not the time.

Freddie’s silent for the rest of the car ride, not that he could get a word in edgeways around the children anyway.Brian keeps shooting him reassuring glances but Freddie still looks faintly sick when they pull up outside.

The kids race ahead up the garden path while Brian’s still getting Emma out of her car seat and Freddie’s lingering at his side, practically glued against him and vibrating with nervous energy.

Brian can’t help but chuckle at him, knocking the door closed and arranging Emma on his hip.He wants to take Freddie’s hand in his but Freddie’s clutching the flowers and wine to his chest like they’re shields.“Oh, sweetheart,” he says fondly, smiling at him.“I promise it’ll be okay.”

Actually, Brian’s a little nervous himself but he refuses to let it show, especially with how much of a wreck Freddie is.But he meant what he told him; if there’s even the slightest hint of untoward behaviour, he’ll turn around and leave without a second’s hesitation. 

At least Freddie’s already met his mum, and she certainly loves him.These days when she calls she asks after Freddie more than she does Brian himself.

Of course, Freddie is endlessly loveable but Brian also suspects she’s simply over the moon that he’s found someone to seriously date—she’s been worried about him since the split, and especially since taking on the kids.She’s more grateful to Freddie for showing up in Brian’s life than he’ll ever know, though nowhere near as grateful as Brian is.

Ruth’s already at the door by the time Freddie and Brian get there, bending down to hug Jack and Lily before letting them charge past her into the house and watching with barely concealed glee as Brian walks up the path with Freddie.

“Freddie, my dear, I’m _so_ glad you came,” she says enthusiastically, kissing his cheek and beaming at him. 

“Thank you for inviting me, darling,” Freddie replies, holding out the flowers.“These are for you.And this,” he adds, handing over the wine. 

“Oh, you dear, you didn’t have to do that,” Ruth says, gently swatting at him but peering intently at the label on the wine.“Oh wonderful, Freddie!This’ll be perfect for dinner, we’re having beef.I daresay you’ve got better taste than Brian.”With that she finally turns to her son and Brian envelopes her in a hug, laughing a bit.

“Remembered I’m here, did you?”

“Well I see you every week, Brian—to see Freddie is quite the treat.Do you know he’s only ever brought one other person around to meet us?” Ruth says, looking meaningfully at Freddie as she ushers them inside.

Freddie doesn’t know what to say to that, seeing as he can only assume the one other person had been Brian’s _wife_.

Brian panics at once.“ _Mum_ ,” he hisses, as though Freddie can’t hear him.“Can you please not?”

“I’m just saying, Brian, it’s so wonderful for you to bring someone round.I’ve been telling him to bring you with him for _weeks_ , Freddie,” Ruth says, leading the way through the hallway and into the kitchen, which smells absolutely delicious but Freddie can barely register it because Brian’s father is stood by the oven, looking about as nervous as Freddie feels.

He’s nearly as tall as Brian, which immediately makes him intimidating to Freddie’s five-nine-and-a- _tiny_ -bit, and strikingly similar to him in looks, though the hair must’ve come from his mother.

He looks momentarily blindsided when they walk in but recovers quickly, straightening up and looking between the two of them.  “Alright, Brian?” he greets, before his gaze slides to Freddie.

Freddie resists the urge to meld himself to Brian’s side and smiles instead.There’s a beat that feels about an hour too long, then Brian’s dad crosses the kitchen and offers a hand.

“Freddie, isn’t it?” he asks.His handshake is firm and confident and Freddie breathes his first sigh of relief.

“That’s right, Mr May,” Freddie tells him.“It’s lovely to meet you, thank you for inviting me.”

“You can call me Harold,” he says, dropping Freddie’s hand.He just stands there for a moment, taking Freddie in, eyes moving slowly from Freddie to Brian and back again. 

“Freddie brought wine, Dad,” Brian puts in, and his voice sounds a little strangled.When Freddie glances at him he’s smiling a little too widely.

“Oh, it looks lovely, dear!” Ruth puts in from where she’s been pretending not to watch.  “I thought we could have a glass with dinner.”

Harold nods.“That’ll be nice,” he agrees.“Where are my other grandchildren, then?I haven’t even seen them.”He wrests Emma from Brian as he asks and wraps both arms around her, kissing her gently on the forehead before he wanders away to look for the other two.

Once he’s gone, Brian’s shoulders relax and he and his mum exchange a quick look. 

“I told you,” Ruth mouths to him, but she’s not smug, she looks relieved.“He loves you, Brian.” 

“I know,” Brian says thickly.He tries to clear his throat a few times before he just turns away and gets himself a glass of water. 

Freddie stands there feeling horribly awkward for a handful of seconds until Brian’s collected himself and turned back, taking his hand and grinning at him.“See?” he says, like he never doubted for a moment that it’d all be fine.“Do you need a hand with anything, Mum, or do you mind if I show Freddie around?”

“No, no, give him the tour!” Ruth waves them off, turning back to the pots and pans on the hob, humming to herself as she stirs and simmers. 

Brian tugs Freddie out of the room without delay, waving a hand behind them.“Kitchen, obviously.It used to be smaller than that, they had it redone last year,” he says conversationally, showing Freddie down the hall into the next room.“Living room.”

It’s a fairly typical looking living room with a warm, reddish theme but Freddie barely gets to see it because Brian hauls him away half a second after he’s shown him in the door.

“Dining room, office, utility,” Brian reels off, giving each of these the same whistle-stop treatment as he had the living room.Freddie tries to look at them but Brian’s impatiently tugging on his hand, leading him upstairs while Freddie’s trying to look out into the conservatory. 

The almost hyperactive quality of his relief clues Freddie in to the fact that he hadn’t been at all certain of their welcome here today, was probably even more nervous than Freddie had been.

“This is my old room,” Brian says when they reach the landing, pushing open the door to their right.This time he steps inside and closes the door behind Freddie, shutting them in what is now clearly a guest bedroom of some kind.

It’s nice—plain the way guest bedrooms are but with flowers in a vase, a few books and board games and other bits tucked out of the way in here rather than cluttering up the downstairs.There’s a guitar in a stand in one corner and Freddie looks at it curiously.

“Whose is this?”

“Oh, that’s mine.”Brian goes over to it and runs his fingers along the strings just below the head.“I made it.Well, Dad and I did.”

“You...what?You _made_ it?”

Brian grins at him.“Yeah, before I went to uni.We just made it out of odd bits, you know?Wood from the fireplace, some of Mum’s buttons for the fret markers, things like that.”

Freddie is actually stunned.Brian does things like this, sometimes.Just casually drops the most surprising facts into conversation because he has no idea how terrifyingly intelligent he is to normal people.Sometimes it’s something to do with space or the universe that Freddie hasn’t a hope of understanding, sometimes it’s just that he built an entire electric guitar from scratch out of scraps.

“Can you play?”

“I used to, don’t know if I can any more.”

Freddie’s expecting him to give a demonstration but Brian ignores the guitar and gathers him up instead, kissing him so deeply it takes Freddie’s breath away.

He lets himself stay caught in it for longer than he means to before putting his hands on Brian’s chest and disentangling himself.“ _Brian_ ,” he says, as sternly as he can manage.“Your parents are downstairs.”

“They won’t hear.”Brian kisses him again.“Mum’ll have the radio on, Dad’s in the garden.”Another kiss, his tongue somehow finding its way into Freddie’s mouth.

Freddie groans before he pulls back again.“You’re insatiable, darling,” he laughs.

Brian, not to be deterred, walks him backwards to the bed and starts up kissing him again until Freddie’s flushed and breathless.

“Your mother and father are _downstairs_ ,” he says, pulling back and putting his hand over Brian’s mouth so he _can’t_ kiss him again, then letting out a tiny shriek when Brian _licks his palm._ “Darling!” he complains, scandalised.

“Baby,” Brian returns with a smirk as Freddie yanks his hand away and wipes it off on the leg of Brian’s jeans.

“I don’t want your parents to think I’m some kind of deviant, enticing their son with sex _right above their heads_ ,” Freddie protests.

“I don’t mind,” Brian says at once.“Entice away.”

Freddie snorts but Brian does give in and sit up, after one last kiss.  He even delicately straightens Freddie’s t-shirt for him where it had ridden up, though he doesn’t move to get off Freddie’s thighs.  He just sits there and smiles down at him, so tender and affectionate that Freddie flaps a hand at him to distract him—if he carries on like that Freddie won't be able to help himself and trousers will be off within the minute.

“So was that...a good reaction from your dad?” Freddie asks uncertainly. 

“Oh definitely,” Brian says, getting off of Freddie’s thighs and dropping down to lie next to him.  “Trust me, if he hated you, you’d know.”  He hadn’t liked Kirsty at first, even though she’d been a woman.  He’d thought they were too young, that Brian would throw in his degree to work in a factory or something so he could support her, especially when she fell pregnant so quickly.  It had taken him months to show any sort of interest in her, only after he realised Brian was serious about the relationship and Jack was well on the way.

“I think it’ll take him some getting used to,” Brian allows after a moment, “but he’s trying.He really is.”It’s a far cry from how he’d reacted when Brian first came out to them, and the denial Brian’s suspected he’s lived in ever since. 

Freddie rolls onto his side so he can look at Brian properly.“You thought he’d be awful, didn’t you?” he says shrewdly.“I could tell by how relieved you were.”

Brian makes a face.“I wasn’t very subtle, was I?”

“Nor your mother,” Freddie laughs.

“Sorry,” Brian says, taking Freddie’s hand and bringing it to his mouth to kiss.“I didn’t think he’d be nasty but I was worried he’d be rude or something.But I swear, if he’d said _anything_ I would’ve put you straight back in the car.

“I know,” Freddie assures him quickly.“It’s fine, darling.I’m glad you brought me, even though I was terrified.”

Brian laughs and kisses his knuckles again.“Honestly, my mum loves you so much I don’t think he’d dare say anything in case she picked you over him,” he says with no small amount of amusement.“I’m worried she might pick you over _me_ , actually.”

“Well, I did bring flowers,” Freddie says. 

“Little suck-up,” Brian teases him, snorting.

Freddie hits his shoulder.“If I remember correctly, darling, you didn’t have any problem with me being a suck-up this morning.”

“None at all,” Brian agrees, abandoning Freddie’s hand and kissing him on the mouth again, not as heavy as before but still probably an inappropriate amount of tongue for your mother’s guest bedroom.He breaks apart with a reluctant sigh and sits up.“I’ll ask Mum today when she can next have the kids for the night,” he says.As much as he loves how good Freddie is with the children, he definitely feels like they’re in need of some alone time.

“That’ll be nice,” Freddie says.As he sits up he catches sight of the guitar again and walks back over to it, crouching down to inspect it properly.“I can’t believe you built this, Brian.How did you even know what to _do_?”

“It was a lot of trial and error,” Brian admits, coming over as well and picking it up.He slides the strap over his shoulder almost without thinking about it, strums a few quick chords.It’s horribly out of tune after sitting untouched for God knows how long and he automatically twists the tuning pegs to fix it. 

“What did you used to play?” Freddie asks.

“Rock’n’roll, mostly.I had a band and we did some covers and we tried writing our own stuff for a bit.Played a few pubs and that but uni got really busy so we couldn’t really focus on it.”Brian half-grins over at Freddie and shrugs in a _what-can-you-do?_ sort of way.

“It suits you,” is all Freddie can think of to say, because it really does.  Somehow he can just imagine Brian up on stage with that guitar strapped to him, strumming away, even though rockstar is about the farthest thing from Brian you’d ever think of, to look at him.  Though, with the hair…

Freddie sits back on the bed.“Play me something,” he requests.

Brian thinks for a moment before starting to pluck away, something fast and rocky that Freddie’s doesn’t recognise.His fingers are quick and Freddie can’t help but watch his hands until Brian stops with a little flourish and a slightly self-conscious grin. 

“I’m out of practice,” he says, pulling the guitar off and setting it back in its stand.

“It sounded wonderful to me, darling,” Freddie disagrees, impressed and all the more attracted to the man, though how that’s even possible he doesn’t know.“What was it?”

“Nothing, just something I made up,” Brian says dismissively and Freddie nearly chokes.

“You _what_?God, Bri, you certainly know how to make a man feel inadequate!All I can do is bloody _paint_.”He’d played piano for a bit in school but he’d never kept up with it, isn’t sure he’d remember what to do if he came across one now.

“You are the farthest thing from inadequate I could ever think of,” Brian says, crossing back over to Freddie and bending down to kiss him, one hand coming up to cup the back of his neck.“The most— _perfect_ —boyfriend—I could ever—ask for.”He intersperses his words with kisses and Freddie’s so thoroughly, frighteningly in love with him it nearly aches.

He’s in very great danger of saying it aloud and probably ruining everything when Ruth saves him, calling for them from downstairs to say that lunch is ready.

Freddie’s nervous all over again, immediately worried he’s going to say something brainless or ridiculous over dinner and Brian’s parents are going to realise that their son is far, far too good for someone like him and convince him to call it off.

Brian links their fingers together and leads Freddie back downstairs where his father and all three children are already at the table.

“Freddie!” Lily says joyfully.

Freddie tenses when he sees Harold’s eyes flicker to their joined hands but he doesn’t say anything and Brian doesn’t let go of him until he’s sat down. 

Freddie doesn’t take the empty spot next to him, instead walking out into the kitchen where Ruth is busy getting the last few bits ready.“Is there anything I can help with, my dear?” he asks.

“Oh, Freddie, you’re such an angel!Do you mind taking these through for me?” she asks, a bit harried, handing him a stack of plates.

Freddie takes them, glad to be able to help, and reappears in the dining room just as Brian’s glancing around for him.

“Oh, there you are!”

“Ruth!” Harold lets out suddenly, raising his voice.“What’ve you got him carrying plates for?He’s our _guest_.Brian, go and help your mother.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Freddie says quickly, as Ruth appears with a big bowl of potatoes.

“Well, I don’t see anyone _else_ offering to help!” she says pointedly, at which her husband gives a little sigh and gets up.

He taps Freddie on the shoulder as he walks by.“You sit down, Freddie.”

Freddie dithers for a moment before taking his seat, quite glad to be between Brian and Jack because he feels rather more secure there. 

Jack grins at him.“Granny’s roast dinner is the _best_ , she cooks _so_ much better than Dad,” he tells him.“ _And_ she gives us pudding.”

“I’d be offended,” Brian says suddenly from behind, walking in with a dish full of vegetables.“But it’s true.”

“Oh, darling, I like your cooking,” Freddie says and Brian beams at him.“You’re much better than me, anyway.”

“Oh no, don’t tell me you’ve found one who’s hopeless in the kitchen, Brian,” Ruth tuts, shaking her head at Freddie and setting more dishes down.“Didn’t your mother teach you to cook, Freddie?”

Freddie lifts one shoulder.“There wasn’t really time,” he says, not wanting to do his mother a disservice by making out his uselessness in the kitchen is her fault.“I went to boarding school so I wasn’t really at home, and then I was off to uni.”

“Boarding school?Well, you must have some stories to tell, then!” Ruth says.

“It was quite boring, really,” Freddie admits.There _are_ definitely some stories but not ones he thinks are best shared with Brian’s parents, especially not with his children present.Even Brian’s only heard a handful of them so far.

“Did your parents send you to boarding school because you were naughty?” Jack asks curiously.

Freddie shakes his head.“No,” he says, before making a face.“At least, I don’t _think_ so.”

“Nervous, Jack?” Brian teases him, reappearing in the dining room with the last of the dishes. 

“No!”

Brian laughs and ruffles his hair after he’s put the dishes down, taking his seat as his father uncorks the wine and pours the adults each a glass.

“Can I have some?” Lily asks and Ruth chuckles.

“Not until you’re a lot older, my dear,” she says gently.“Cheers, everybody,” she adds, lifting her glass.“Thank you for coming, Freddie.”

“The pleasure’s all mine,” Freddie says, clinking their glasses together and turning to clink it with Jack’s cup of squash as well, which Jack loves, immediately toasting everybody else at the table. 

Dinner’s quiet at first, just the sounds of knives and forks and, “Ruth, this is fantastic,” and “It really is great, Mum, thank you,” and “The wine’s perfect Freddie, what an excellent choice.”Which is all normal enough and Freddie’s starting to enjoy himself, it feels like ages since he sat down to a family dinner like this—he really needs to pop home for an afternoon, his parents don’t live far at all but Freddie lets himself be far too busy and ends up not visiting for weeks and weeks on end. 

Brian’s thigh is pressed against his under the table, comforting, and Lily and Jack are both vying for Freddie’s attention like they want to show off to their grandparents how well they know their guest.When Harold turns to Freddie to ask him what it is he does for a living, Lily replies before Freddie can open his mouth.

“Freddie’s a painter!” she announces. 

“He’s an _artist_ ,” Jack corrects her. 

Freddie blushes a bit and prays Brian’s parents don’t have the same reaction to _that_ as his own father had.Ruth looks rather like she already knew and Freddie immediately suspects that Brian’s been talking about him to her more than he’s let on, but Harold’s eyebrows both jump up.

“An artist?” he repeats.“That’s...different.”Kinder than Freddie’s father had been, by far.“Is it hard to find work?”

“Dad,” Brian says, shooting him a look.

Freddie just laughs.“It used to be, when I was starting out,” he says.“Nobody would buy anything of mine, I had to work loads of other jobs so I could make rent.”

“A hard working lad,” Ruth puts in.

“But once I got out there a bit and people saw my paintings things got a lot better quite quickly.I’m very lucky now,” he says.Sometimes it feels like those days of scraping for rent are only just behind him, when it’s been a few months without selling anything, but he always comes through in the end.

“He’s being modest,” Brian puts in.“He’s not lucky, he’s _brilliant._ His paintings are amazing, they’re all so different.You don’t really have just one style, do you, Fred?He can do anything.You should see this pencil sketch he did of Lil, it’s the spitting image of her.”

“Oh, stop it,” Freddie says, a tiny bit mortified but he can’t stop the pleased grin from taking over his mouth.

Ruth looks about as pleased as Freddie does and even Harold’s watching Brian consideringly.

“I’d love to see some, one day,” Ruth says hopefully.

“Oh, you don’t want to see mine,” Freddie replies at once.“Name a date and I’ll take you to the gallery and you can see all the exhibitions that aren’t open to the public yet, there are some incredible pieces up at the moment, they’ve got a marvellous summer lined up.”He stops himself before he can go off on a spiel about the artists he admires who are exhibiting soon, partly out of respect for Brian’s parents and partly to spare Brian himself as he’s already sat through it twice.

“Oh, that’d be wonderful, Freddie, can you do that?”

“Of course, my dear!”

Brian grins proudly.“Freddie’s got an exhibition coming up soon,” he says.“I’ve only seen some of the paintings but…”He shakes his head.“Get Freddie to show you, Mum, you’d love them.”

“I want to see them!” Lily says loudly, pouting at her father.

“And me!And Emma loves painting!”

“Can we see them, Dad?”

Brian glances at Freddie, not really sure of the policy on that. 

“Of course, my dears,” Freddie says.He’s rather hoping that Brian will come along to the exhibition—they haven’t spoken about it specifically so Freddie hasn’t outright asked but he sort of hopes that, with them being official and all, it’ll be a given.

Ruth’s put a hand over her mouth, looking between Jack and Lily and nearly overflowing with fondness.“Goodness, they really like you, don’t they?” she says to Freddie, once Jack and Lily have pushed their plates away and excused themselves, running off to play until someone announces dessert. 

“I adore them,” Freddie says honestly, and Brian’s hand creeps onto his knee and gives it a slight squeeze.

“Freddie’s so good with them,” he says, and Freddie thinks he might be showing off a little bit as well.  “Lily’s always asking for Freddie to read a bedtime story instead of me.”

“He does the voices!” Lily shouts from the other room and Freddie laughs.

“You’ll have to watch out for Jack,” Harold says.“Just like our Brian, he is.Gets stuck into something and you won’t see him for hours, he’ll forget to eat if you let him.”

Freddie laughs.“Oh yes,” he agrees.“Peas in a pod.”

“Looked just the same as well,” Ruth says, suddenly standing up.“Ooh, I wonder if I can…”She hurries off without explaining and Brian’s eyes go narrow.

“Mum!” he calls warningly, actually standing up as Ruth returns with what is unmistakably a photo album in her hands.“Oh God, Mum, don’t do that to me!”

Freddie’s never moved so fast in his life, shooting around the table to look over Ruth’s shoulder before Brian can stop him.“Oh my goodness!That’s not Brian?”

“It is!He was a scrawny little thing, we didn’t think he’d grow half as tall as he did, even with Harold,” Ruth says. 

“My God, Brian, you were so _tiny_!” Freddie coos, awestruck.“And _bald_!”

Harold snorts at that.“The hair was a surprise.There’s one...oh, where is it, Ruth?”He gets up and comes over as well, reaching over Ruth’s other shoulder to flick through various photos of Brian at a handful of months old until he finds one where he’s a toddler, maybe two or three, with a head full of the wildest hair Freddie’s ever seen on a child. 

“There,” Harold says, tapping it.“Barely knee high, he was, with that on his head, but would he let us cut it?”

“Oh, the tantrums he used to throw if you came near him with a pair of scissors,” Ruth says fondly.

“Guys!” Brian says loudly, staring in horror across the table at the photo.  

“And here,” Harold carries on, turning a few pages.“Looks just like Jack, doesn’t he?” 

He does.His hair’s a little wilder—though not by much—and a bit longer than Jack’s, with a longer nose, but other than that they could be the same child. 

“Wow, he really does look like you, darling,” Freddie tells Brian, glancing up at him and grinning when he meets Brian’s gaze.  

He looks calmer now they’re just looking at pictures where he’s a kid but mortification creeps back in when his mother flips back a few pages and finds a photo of him in the bathtub. 

Freddie lets out a noise he probably ought to be ashamed of and Ruth giggles while Brian gets up, shaking his head. 

“If you’re all going to embarrass me I’m not going to sit through it,” he says decisively.“Does anyone want tea?”

He disappears to the kitchen and Freddie drags a chair over so he can look properly, carefully flipping through each page while Ruth and occasionally Harold tells him how old Brian is in them, or an anecdote from the time.It’s quite apparent that these two dote on their son, whatever Brian thinks, and Freddie’s warmed by it; he feels quite at home amongst people who love Brian May.

The afternoon passes quite pleasantly in that matter; Ruth digs out another photo album when they reach the end of the first one and this time Brian and the children join them, Brian covering his eyes at his attempts at slicking his hair flat when he was a teenager while the kids giggle at seeing their father as a child. 

After dessert, over another cup of tea, Harold finds another album after Freddie asks him about the guitar upstairs and shows him the photos they’d taken of each stage of the process, talking him through bits in the exact same way Brian does when he doesn’t realise that other people don’t understand a word of what he’s saying.

Freddie follows along as best he can, mostly enamoured by the brief shots of a very young and adorable Brian that occasionally pop up holding the guitar or measuring some bit.

He’s actually a little bit disappointed to leave when it comes time, giving Ruth a hug at the door, made slightly awkward by the fact that Jack wanted a piggyback to the car and Freddie can’t refuse.He has to clutch at him one-handed while he shakes Harold’s hand with the other, absolutely elated when he gets what he thinks might be a nod of approval from the man.

He’s giddy all the way back to Brian’s house, all of them full and content and the children dozing off in the back while Brian keeps grinning over at Freddie because even he can’t believe that went so well.

Later on in bed, after Freddie lets himself be talked into staying another night (and texts Roger to ask him to _pretty please_ feed the cats and give them lots of cuddles from him), Brian pulls him close and kisses his face all over, boyishly excited.

“God, they loved you,” he says breathlessly.“Even Dad, bloody hell!I can’t believe he talked to you about the guitar, it was like he’d known you for years.” 

Freddie’s laughing, ticklish with the way Brian’s hands keep drifting, and floating on his own sense of relief and happiness that today went so well.“Your family is wonderful, Brian, it really is.Do you have _any_ idea how much your parents love you?”

Brian gives a sheepish laugh.“Starting to,” he replies, kisses trailing from jaw, to cheek, to mouth like he just ended up there accidentally but since he’s here, may as well make a day of it. 

Freddie moans into the kiss and wraps his legs around Brian’s hips when Brian rolls on top of him, feeling like he’s been waiting all bloody day for this.

And this time, he’s determined, there will be no interruptions. 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

**Morning.  Miss you Xxxx**

 

**morning darling, I miss you more xxxxxxx**

 

**I miss you even more than that xxxxxxxxxxxx**

 

**actually I miss you even more than THAT xxxxxxxxxxxxx**

 

“Oh _God_ ,” Roger says as he glances over Freddie’s shoulder at his phone.  “You two are ridiculous.”

“Aren’t we?” Freddie says dreamily, clutching his phone to his chest.  

Roger gives him a playful shove and carries on eating his bowl of cereal, eyes periodically flicking toward the clock to make sure he doesn’t lose track of time and wind up late for work.  “Absolutely ridiculous,” he says.  “It’s barely eight in the morning.  Aren’t you seeing each other later?”

“Yep!”  And Freddie can’t _wait_ , it’s been _days_ since he last saw Brian—their working hours have completely misaligned this week, with Brian having to cover lectures for a colleague who’s been out sick and Freddie suddenly tied up in more work lunches and dinners than he would ever choose to eat in one week.  His exhibition is getting closer and closer so he’s having to network a lot more at the moment, wining and dining old buyers and potential new ones.  It’s a necessary part of his job and Freddie doesn’t _mind_ it but he’s absolutely exhausted by it this week.  

Roger makes a face.  “Are you coming back here?  Do I need to buy some ear plugs?”  

“Rog that was _two times_ —”

“It was _way_ more than twice!  You’re _not_ quiet, you know!  Neither’s he, for that matter,” Roger shoots back.  He’s glad Freddie’s happy but if he has to listen to them shagging _one more time_ he’s going to smother Freddie in his sleep.

Freddie throws a teaspoon at him which clatters off a cupboard and nearly cracks their hob.  “Oh, shut up,” he says.  “We’re going back to his, anyway.  His parents are having the kids for the night.”

“I feel bad for his neighbours.”

“Oh, fuck off!” Freddie says, not really offended.  “You _should_ feel bad for my back, he has a _terrible_ mattress.”

“I’m not surprised!” Roger retorts, putting his bowl in the sink.  “Will you be home when I get back later?”

“Probably not.”

“Alright, well have a good time, then.  Have fun, be safe, all that stuff.  Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Roger says as he grabs his things and heads for the door.

Freddie waves him off and checks his phone as soon as the door’s shut, elated to see three new messages from Brian.

 

**Just wait until later I’ll show you how much I’ve missed you xxxxxxx**

**Can’t wait to see you xxxxxxxxxx**

**Can I come and get you straight after work?  I’ve dropped the kids overnight stuff with Mum already xxxxxxxx**

 

Freddie has to take a few calming breaths because he’s getting far too excited over simple text messages but he just _likes Brian so damn much_.    
 ****

 

**will you now?  I’m looking forward to it darling ;) of course you can i’ll be at the studio xxxxxxxxxxxx**

 

**I’ll text you when I’m on my way xxxxxx**

 

Freddie grins stupidly down at his phone and has to give Delilah a big hug because he needs to cuddle _something_ before he sets about getting ready for the day.  

 

 

* * *

 

 

Brian’s eyes barely leave the clock all day, watching as every minute creeps past torturously slowly.  He gives some very distracted lectures and promises the students he’ll send the slides out because he has no idea how effectively he’s actually managed to communicate the subject material.  Probably not very, if the blank looks are anything to go by, but then again his students often look like that so it may not be entirely Brian’s fault.

He works straight through his lunch hour marking papers so he won’t have to stay behind a minute longer than he has to and sprints out of his final class almost before his students do, which is truly saying something.

He makes it home and showers in record time, then nearly chokes himself by using far too much aftershave in his haste and has to go and rinse off a bit before he can get changed and tear out of the house.  He feels like he’s seventeen all over again, stomach fluttery at the thought of seeing Freddie after so long without him—it’s only been a few days but it may as well have been a month.

They’ve texted nearly constantly and Facetimed almost every night but it’s not the same.  In fact, seeing Freddie curled in his blankets in bed, soft and sleepy with messy hair and no shirt on the phone screen but unable to touch him had almost been worse than not seeing him at all.  Almost.  Brian’s been treasuring those moments though, talking in a low voice so he won’t wake the children up, talking about anything and everything until Freddie’s dropped his phone one too many times and doesn’t pick it up again, fast asleep while Brian just grins stupidly down at the black screen, listening to him breathe for a few minutes until he thinks it probably borders on creepy and makes himself hang up and text **‘Night then, Sleeping Beauty! xxxxx** ’ for Freddie to see in the morning. 

Brian wouldn’t be surprised if he gets a speeding fine through the post in a week, the way he drives across the city.  

Freddie’s studio is right in the centre so it’s convenient for him with his apartment and the art galleries but it’s a nightmare to get to during rush hour, particularly on a Friday, but he makes it in the end.

Freddie’s plan for today had been to clear out the studio, go through his supplies and have a good tidy up, throw away the broken canvases he doesn’t know why he’s still got, chuck out the paints he never uses and take stock so he can start fresh once the exhibition is over.

When Brian lets himself in, however, he isn’t greeted by a flurry of movement or the sound of the radio playing while Freddie tidies.  It’s silent, though all the lights are on, and Brian knows immediately that Freddie’s gotten distracted.

He picks his way carefully across the floor, where there is evidence that a tidy up was at least _started_ , boxes of art supplies everywhere he looks, but when he finds Freddie he’s just painting.  

He hasn’t noticed Brian arriving, too intent on what he’s doing, though Brian can’t see the canvas from where he’s stood.  

Brian takes a moment to just look at him, to take him in.  He truly is the most beautiful thing Brian’s ever seen—if he were an artist himself, that’s all he’d draw, he’d devote his life to trying and invariably failing to capture Freddie on a page.  Because it would be impossible; so much of his beauty is in the simple _life_ of him, just _Freddie_.  

He’s clad only in jeans and, for some reason, one shoe, and there’s paint on his shoulders and in his hair and on the back of the one ear Brian can see.  

Brian loves him so much.

“Fred?” he calls softly.  “Freddie!”

Freddie starts and looks around, blinking dazedly, and his eyes fly wide open when he sees Brian.

“Oh, God!” he says, slipping off his stool.  “I’m so sorry, my dear, what’s the time?”  Even as he’s talking he’s hurrying over, throwing himself into Brian’s arms and hugging him tightly.  “It’s so good to see you, darling!”

“You too,” Brian laughs, holding him tight.  He can’t resist picking him up for a moment, sliding both hands under him and lifting him into his hips.  

Freddie lets out a shriek as though Brian’s just thrown him ten feet, his legs wrapping themselves securely around Brian as he laughs and kisses him.  It puts Freddie at a height where Brian has to tip his head up to kiss him back and he can’t help but grin.

“I hope we haven’t just gotten paint all over my clothes,” Brian says, muffled against Freddie’s mouth.

“Oh dear,” Freddie says, breaking away.  “So do I.”

Brian lets him down and they both spend a moment checking that his shirt is still clean, Freddie breathing an audible sigh of relief when it is.  “Well don’t you look wonderful,” he says, one hand on Brian’s arm as he fully takes in his outfit.  It’s just jeans and a shirt but Freddie looks about ready to skip going out and head straight to bed.

Brian grins at him.  “So do you,” he says lowly.  “I love you in this shirt.”

“I’m not wearing a shirt.”

“Exactly.”

Brian steps closer and runs both hands down his back, until Freddie shivers and steps away. 

“Don’t you distract me,” he says, pointing sternly at him.  

Brian grins impishly.  “Aren’t you tempted?  It’s been ages.”  He steps close again and gently pulls Freddie back in by the belt-loops, kissing him with such intense focus Freddie’s left breathless and a tiny bit dazed.

Satisfied, Brian pulls away.  “Seems like you _did_ get distracted,” he comments, looking around.  “Did you forget I was picking you up?”

“Of course not, darling!” Freddie assures him before he looks sheepish.  “I didn’t _forget_ , I’ve been thinking about it all day.  I just lost track of time.”

“Hmm,” Brian says knowingly, looking around at the mess.  “Tidy up was a success?”

“Oh, you sound like my mother!” Freddie says, batting at him.  “I was _inspired_ , you know how it is.”

Brian doesn’t, really, but he knows Freddie.  “Can I see?” he asks hopefully.  

Freddie hesitates.  “It’s not finished,” he warns, but he takes Brian’s hand and pulls him around a bit so he can see what’s on the front of his canvas.

Brian sucks in a quick breath.  “Freddie, this is _amazing_ ,” he says, crouching down to peer more closely.

It’s Freddie himself.  Freddie beaming, _glowing_ with happiness, the light in his eyes somehow caught perfectly by his brush, the way they crinkle when he laughs, the dimple at the corner of his mouth.  He’s painted his teeth far too big, the way he himself sees them, but other than that it’s such a great likeness Brian’s honestly stunned by how good it is.

He’s seen quite a few of Freddie’s paintings, the ones he has up in his apartment, a few he still has lying around the studio unsold for various reasons, and the ones for the exhibition.  And Freddie draws a lot otherwise, always distracted and doodling, Brian’s had to rescue more than one research paper out from under his wandering pencil, but this is something else.  There’s something so _personal_ in this that’s not been present in anything else Brian’s seen yet.

“It’s not finished,” Freddie says again, a bit nervously.  “I haven’t done a self-portrait since art school but I sort of had this idea for a little series of them, not to sell of course.  Just...because.”

“You _should_ sell it, this is amazing, Fred,” Brian tells him, putting an arm around him to give him a quick squeeze.  “I’d buy that.”

Freddie flushes beet red and squirms away, waving him off.  “Nobody wants to buy someone else’s self-portraits,” he says dismissively.  “It’s because of you, though,” he adds before he can help himself.  One finger fiddles absently with the corner of the canvas and he chews his lip worriedly.

“Because of _me_?” Brian asks in surprise.

“How happy you make me,” Freddie confesses shyly.  “You texted me earlier and I caught sight of myself in the window.”  He points to the window between the studio and the little office-y bit that Freddie never uses.  “Smiling like _that_ ,” he says, jerking his head at the painting and twisting his hands together.  He’s so nervous telling Brian this that it makes Brian’s heart ache.

“Baby,” he says softly, folding Freddie into his chest again.

Freddie opens to him so easily, tucking his head into Brian’s chest and looping his arms around him.

This would be the time to say it, Brian knows.  _I love you_.  It would be so easy.  It’s on the tip of his tongue.  

“I can’t tell you how much that means to me,” he says instead, chickening out.  

Freddie lets out a soft, relieved sigh and holds onto Brian for a few more moments but he pulls away as Brian’s hand slips casually from his hip to his arse.

“Time for that later!” he says, skillfully weaving out of Brian’s arms with a mischievous grin that Brian could just _eat_.  “We’re going out!”

“Don’t you want to just stay in?  There’s nobody else here…” Brian says meaningfully, letting his eyes roam from head to toe until Freddie blushes again.

“Absolutely not,” Freddie tells him.  “Have you felt how hard this floor is?  I’m not some common tart, darling!”

Brian snorts.  “I’d put a jacket down,” he says, half-seriously.

Freddie shakes his head at him, trying to hide his grin.  “You’ll just have to wait,” he says, hastily starting to pack his things away.  “It’ll be well worth your while, darling.”

“Will it, now?” Brian asks slyly, picking up a discarded rag and throwing it towards the sink in a semblance of helping, though the studio is in such chaos it makes very little difference.

“Oh yes,” Freddie purrs, sidling closer as he walks by with dirty paintbrushes, watching Brian coyly through his eyelashes.  “When I’m drunk I’m _very_ flexible.  And drunk-me doesn’t have a gag reflex.”

In truth, sober Freddie barely has a gag reflex either but that _does_ get Brian’s attention because it must mean Freddie is intending to blow him later and Brian is very much interested in that part of the evening.

“I can’t wait to meet him,” he says, clearing his throat a moment later because it’s been a few days and by this point he’s honestly not sure if he _can_ wait another few hours.  

“Buy me a drink, then,” Freddie says cheekily, pulling his shirt on from wherever it had been stored safely out of the way.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Brian does, forty minutes later after Freddie’s scrubbed the paint off his face and searched out his missing shoe so they could head out, holding hands and cuddling into each other every time they had to wait at a road crossing.

They start out at a bar but even there the vibe is different to the dinners and drinks they’ve had so far; it’s louder, for one, and there are neon lights as decoration and all the tables are high ones with bar stools underneath.

Freddie claims one in a corner while Brian orders for both of them and carries their drinks back.  

Tonight was Freddie’s idea; Brian had managed to get them a child-free night and Freddie had wanted to use it to go clubbing.  Brian hadn’t been _too_ keen on the idea at first but Freddie’d made noises about a club that only opened recently he’s been wanting to check out and he could be _very_ persuasive when he wanted to be.  

Brian gets to choose their next date night and he thinks he’ll use it for a night in with movies (he might even, generously, let Freddie pick the film) and wine and, if he can get his mum and dad to have the kids again, long, lazy sex on the sofa.  Tonight promises to be just about the polar opposite of that.

“I haven’t been out properly in...God, I don’t even know how long,” Brian says as he sits down, looking around.

“Oh, you should try being friends with Roger!” Freddie laughs.

Brian arches an eyebrow at him.  “I know you’re _just_ as bad,” he says, grinning.  

Freddie waves him off, unable to dispute that, and sips his drink.  “When did you last go out, darling?  _Please_ don’t tell me it was when you were in uni.”

“Not _quite_ that long,” Brian grins.  Feels like it, though.  “I did a bit, after my divorce, and after Tim and I had broken up.  Had a couple of hook-ups but I never really liked it much.  The parties always seemed fine when I was a kid but everywhere seems sort of... _sticky_ now, don’t you think?”

Freddie snorts so hard he nearly loses his drink.  “Brian!” he gasps.  “ _What_ sort of places have _you_ been going to that get you so _sticky_?” he asks, winking suggestively.

“Not like that!” Brian says, gently whacking Freddie’s shoulder.  “Not that I _mind_ that,” he adds and Freddie stops laughing suddenly, busying himself with his drink.  

“Oh?” Freddie says casually.  “You go in for a bit of kinky sex, do you?”  His heart swoops as he asks, it feels too daring when they’re not even a drink in, but Brian doesn’t baulk.

“Occasionally,” Brian says slowly, watching Freddie over the rim of his glass.

Freddie feels warm through and has to take a drink to give himself a moment, wishing he’d ordered a double vodka all of a sudden.

Brian smirks, pleased to have flustered him a bit, and knocks their feet together under the table.  “I’m expecting you to show me all the classy clubs tonight,” he says, casually moving the subject onto something a bit easier to talk about, because the rest should probably be saved for somewhere more private.  

“Oh, I’ll give you the grand tour,” Freddie assures him.  “We’ll just have to be sure to avoid The Garden or we’ll bump into Roger and probably end up in another timezone.”

“That crazy?” Brian asks, and Freddie launches into a story about one time during their younger years of running a market stall in Kensington when he didn’t know _how_ much they’d had to drink, but he knows they’d started around lunch and just hadn’t stopped, and they’d ended up being cautioned by the police in _Yorkshire_ with absolutely no memory of how they’d gotten there.

Which reminds him of _another_ time…

They pass the time easily, ordering more drinks and swapping drunk stories, where Brian is hopelessly outgunned by Freddie, though Freddie does manage to coax out of him the time he’d gotten so fucked on _something_ during uni that he’d wound up naked on the roof of his dorms absolutely _positive_ he could see the Zodiacal Dust with his own eyes and ended up writing nearly ten thousand words of notes for his thesis that turned out to be absolute nonsense.

“I fucking _handed it in_ ,” Brian remembers, mortified, though Freddie’s hunched over and shaking with laughter, waving at him not to say anything else because he thinks he might rupture something.  “My supervisor emailed me could he please see me as soon as possible, I thought something was seriously wrong, and he just handed me back these pages—honestly, pages and _pages_ —of my writing and it was just bollocks.”

“Oh God!  Darling!  What did you _do_?”

Brian shakes his head, hiding his eyes behind one hand.  “He thought I’d been pranked or something, thank God, so I let him carry on thinking that.  Took them back, binned them, swore I’d never touch anything that wasn’t just alcohol again.”

Freddie can still barely keep his laughter under control.  “You poor dear!  Why were you _naked_?”

“I wish I knew,” Brian says, uncovering his eyes so he can drain the last of his drink.  “My friends took _photos_ , the assholes.  They had to call the fire brigade to get me down.”

That sets Freddie off again and he nearly spills his drink as he collapses onto the table, hysterical with laughter.  

They’re both more than a little tipsy by the time they settle their tab, handsy as they make their way out of the bar and back onto the street to find the club Freddie had wanted to check out.  Freddie didn’t bring a jacket and the evening’s cooled down so Brian lends him his own, but then loops both arms around Freddie’s waist under it so he can stay warm, too—it makes walking terribly awkward, Brian nearly breaks an ankle tripping off a curb, but neither of them care.

They manage to make it to the club without injury, not counting the vivid hickey Brian pushes Freddie against a wall to leave when the wait for the lights to turn green is just a little too long (the green light they then miss, distracted, until a car honks at them as it passes).

The entry price is steep, especially as it’s now quite late, but the club itself is, as promised, very nice and there are no tacky stamps plastered on the backs of their hands when they walk in.  There’s even somewhere to leave a coat, with a nice lady dressed in a smart uniform there to check it in for them, which is a step up from pretty much any club Brian’s ever been in before.

It’s dim but the disco lights stop it from being too dark, flashing and roving over the people dancing, chatting, and drinking everywhere Brian looks.  There are booths, little tables, podiums, roped-off VIP lounges, balconies, and an upstairs guarded by a bodyguard for _V_ -VIPs.  Brian doesn’t recognise the music but it’s not offensive and Freddie must like it because he’s dancing even while they’re waiting at the bar for a drink.

Brian grins down at him, catching him by the waist and tugging him back against his chest, kissing his ear before he speaks.  “Mm, who knew you could move your hips like this?” he asks, swaying his own to match Freddie’s rhythm, very grateful to the amount of alcohol in him that stops him from feeling self-conscious about doing it.

Freddie presses against him, tipping his head back and laughing.  “ _You_ did,” he points out.  Which is true; Brian’s seen Freddie’s hips move in all sorts of delicious ways.  “I didn’t know _you_ could dance, Brian May!”

“Only when drunk,” Brian grins back, nipping at Freddie’s earlobe.  “And properly motivated.”  He pulls Freddie more firmly against his crotch at that, to underscore his point, and Freddie grinds on him like they’re eighteen and Brian _loves_ it.

They should stop when they order their drinks but Brian just steps up close behind Freddie as he leans over the bar and presses into him there, sliding an arm around his stomach to keep him close and being generally very distracting with kisses on his neck and wandering hands while Freddie’s trying to remember what the fuck drinks they drink.

Eventually two glasses get put in front of him and Freddie waves his card at the bartender before he pauses, turning to Brian over his shoulder.  “Do you want a blowjob?” he asks.

“Uh, _yes_.”

“Two blowjobs!” Freddie adds to the barman and Brian huffs, giving his ass a playful swat.

“Brat,” he mutters in his ear, reaching around Freddie for his drink.

Freddie’s grinning, ever so pleased with himself.  “Oh, darling!” he says innocently.  “Did you think I meant something else?”

“You little tease,” Brian says good-naturedly, taking the shot glass Freddie hands him next.  He’s surprised a place like this even does these shots, but he supposes they have the ingredients back there to make almost anything they need.  

“Shall we—” Freddie starts, but Brian necks his drink before he has a chance to finish.  “ _Well_!  I was going to say, shall we do them properly!” he protests.

“You could do a proper one if you like,” Brian tells him slyly.  He’s not _uncomfortably_ hard but his cock is definitely wanting attention after having Freddie’s ass pressed against it and thinking, even for a moment, that he was going to get Freddie’s mouth on him.

Freddie smirks and licks the cream off the top of his glass, keeping eye contact with Brian while he does it.

He really is an awful tease, Brian finds himself biting his lip as he watches, shifting his weight between his feet.

“Is that what you want, darling?” Freddie asks, finally tipping the shot down his throat and smacking his lips after.  “But we can’t leave yet, we only just got here!”

Brian tugs him closer and leans in again.  “They have bathrooms, don’t they?” he suggests meaningfully.

Freddie’s eyes are very big and very bright when Brian pulls back, heart thrumming with excited tension.

“Did you see a sign for one?” Freddie asks and Brian immediately looks around for a bathroom sign.

“Across the dance floor, I think,” he says, taking Freddie’s hand and pulling him in that direction, abandoning their drinks on the bar—he couldn’t care less about those right now.

They find one on the other side of the main floor and for a moment Brian falters because it looks like there’s a long queue, but it’s for the women’s.  The men’s is occupied by only one man, leaning heavily against the wall above the urinal and somehow still managing to sway, so drunk he doesn’t even notice the two men stagger in behind him and slam themselves into the end cubicle.  

“Quite a nice bathroom, really,” Brian says, gently pushing Freddie against the wall and kissing him like his life depends on it.  His mouth is sweet with lingering whipped cream and Brian wants every last bit of it, breathless by the time he pulls away, which he only does because Freddie gets a hand between them and squeezes his cock through his jeans, reminding him why they came in here in the first place.

“Do you think?” Freddie asks, grinning.  “I don’t know, the floor’s a bit dirty, darling.”

Brian can see exactly where he’s going with that.  “Looks fine to me,” he says without looking down, kissing him again.  “Squeaky clean.  Could eat your dinner off it.”

“ _You_ can launder my jeans, then,” Freddie tells him, opening the button on Brian’s and pulling the zip down without breaking eye contact with him before he drops to his knees.

Freddie’s done this for him before but the _sight_ of him down there never fails to make Brian so aroused it’s dizzying, especially here.  They’re safely locked away but they’re still in a public place and there’s no ceiling on the cubicle; the sound of the drunk man stumbling out and a couple of others walking in is so loud they may as well be right in there with them and it’s surprisingly hot.

“You can chuck them in the washing machine when we get back to mine,” Brian says, though he knows _he’ll_ be the one who ends up putting the load on.  Not that he minds, really, particularly right now.

He swallows hard as Freddie starts wriggling his jeans down over his hips, maddeningly slowly, until Brian loses patience and pushes them down himself.  “ _God_ , you’re such a tease,” Brian tells him.  

Freddie smirks up at him, well aware of the effect he’s having.  He’s a brat, really, because he _hates_ it when Brian teases him.  

“Just enjoying myself,” Freddie says, tugging his briefs down as well and letting out a gratifying little gasp before planting a kiss right on Brian’s cock without hesitation.  “Photos simply don’t do you justice, my dear.”

Brian tips his head back and clamps his teeth together for a moment when Freddie closes his mouth around him, running his tongue, so deliciously hot, over the head.  He’s so fucking good at this.  Because it’s not a trade or a favour, Freddie does it because he _loves_ it and he makes it so _obvious_ that he loves it, his eyelids fluttering as he gently takes more and more, humming with pleasure.

“You said you were going to delete those,” Brian says when he can think again.

Freddie pulls off slowly, grinning.  “Why on earth would I do that?” he asks sweetly, taking him in again.  It’d taken him the better part of an _hour_ to talk Brian into sending him a photo but it hadn’t disappointed when he had—they’d had a very nice night of it over the phone but it really doesn’t compare to the real thing; the weight, the warmth, the _taste_.  “It’s been a lonely week, you know.”

“I know,” Brian says.  “I’ve missed you.”

“Have you?” Freddie snorts, licking right the way along his shaft.  Precome glistens on his cheek, not that Freddie seems to have noticed, lazily pumping what isn’t in his mouth.  “Or have you missed _this_?”

“I’ve missed _you_ ,” Brian iterates, then slightly ruins the point by putting his hand on Freddie’s head to guide his mouth back to his cock because if Freddie keeps pulling off to _chat_ he’s going to lose his mind.  “This is just...one _hell_ of a bonus.”  He is never, ever letting him go.

Freddie’s _ridiculously_ talented with his tongue and he was right before; when he’s drunk his gag reflex is practically non-existent, he takes Brian all the way down his throat and Brian’s knees nearly buckle, accidentally banging his head against the wall of the stall as he throws it back.

Freddie does gag a little but holds him tight and stays down and swallows so _perfectly_ , his throat squeezing around him, that Brian can’t stop his hand from tightening in his hair just a little, swearing.

Freddie groans at having his hair pulled even gently and _that_ feels just incredible, the vibration around his cock, and Brian has to use his other arm to muffle himself, biting his forearm.

“Christ, Fred,” he mutters hoarsely.  “Fucking hell, you’re incredible.  Fuck.”

He wants to cry when Freddie pulls back, heaving in several deep breaths, his eyes watering, before he sucks the tip for a few more seconds and pulls off again.  He’s messy, mouth all wet, and part of Brian wants to yank him upright so he can kiss him like that because _God_ if it isn’t one of the most pornographic things he’s ever seen.

“You can fuck my mouth if you want,” Freddie says quickly, and Brian’s mildly disappointed when he uses the back of his hand to wipe off his mouth before he registers what Freddie just said.

His stomach swoops.  He doesn’t think he’s ever actually heard that outside of a porn before.  Certainly no-one’s ever said it to him.  

“Wha—are you sure?” Brian asks, rubbing his thumb questioningly over Freddie’s temple.  He’s not entirely sure this isn’t just a fantastic dream and he’ll have to wake up for work in a minute with his alarm blaring and serious morning wood.  

“Yeah,” Freddie breathes happily, getting ready to swallow him again.  “I’ll do this if I need you to stop.”  He taps Brian’s hip a few times before closing his mouth around him again, sucking for a few seconds and wetting his mouth so he can take him down again.

Brian lets him relax into it, needing a moment himself because this is _easily_ the best blowjob he’s ever received and he’s not going to last long at all.  He waits until Freddie’s taken him almost all the way, those brown eyes gazing up at him with fiery intent, before firmly cupping the back of Freddie’s head in one hand and gently jacking his hips forward.

The feeling is shockingly arousing, the wet heat of Freddie’s throat tight and squeezing all the way down, his tongue pressed flat against the underside of Brian’s cock, his chin small and hard against his balls.

When Freddie doesn’t pull back spluttering or tap for him to stop, Brian lets himself thrust harder, clenching his teeth until someone sets off the hand dryer outside and he can let out a ragged moan.  “Fuck, Fred, _fucking hell_ ,” he gasps, leaning over Freddie’s head to plant his other hand on the cubicle wall opposite, setting his feet properly.  “I’m gonna come in sec, do you mind?”

Freddie moans his approval and doesn’t pull away so Brian keeps hold of his head, jerking his hips as hard as he dares, trying to remember that this is Freddie’s _mouth_ , not his ass, so he can’t just slam into him but _God_ , he wants to.

He only manages to thrust another handful of times before, try as he might, he can’t hold it back any more and has to let go, feeling like he might go _mad_ with having to keep quiet because the bathroom’s just the sound of people pissing and taps running water, nothing loud enough to cover them.

His legs are shaking so badly it’s a wonder he doesn’t collapse and crush Freddie, having to clutch onto the toilet roll dispenser to hold himself upright. 

Freddie keeps him down until he’s done, completely done, and how he’s breathing Brian has _no_ fucking idea because his nose is pushed right against his pubic bone until he eventually pulls back and collapses against the wall, panting for breath and red-faced but very, very pleased.  

He looks utterly debauched like that, flushed with success and mouth still wet, lips shining and he’s dazedly grinning at Brian, too tired to wipe it all away just yet so Brian gets to admire him like that for a little longer.

“Was that okay?” Freddie asks when he can talk and _God_ his voice is hoarse and wrecked, Brian’s cock actually stirs again just hearing it because that was _him_.  

“ _Okay_?” Brian repeats, wide-eyed.  “Freddie that was...God you’re just…Come here.”  He bends down to haul him to his feet, crushing their mouths together and squeezing Freddie’s ass hard, holding him close.

“God,” Brian says when he pulls away, pressing their foreheads together and closing his eyes.  “I don’t know if I can _walk_ after that.  Can I…?”  He reaches between Freddie’s legs but he’s not hard in his jeans and pulls back.

“No need just yet, darling,” Freddie tells him.  “Too focused on you.”  

Brian looks concerned.  “Oh shit, Fred, I didn’t—”

“No, no!” Freddie stops him quickly.  “Trust me, Bri, I _loved_ that.  Almost as much as you,” he adds cheekily.  “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to stay hard with that much cock in your throat but it’s a bit difficult.”

He’s so candid it makes Brian blush and he ducks his head to give Freddie another kiss.

“I’ll have to make it up to you later, then,” he says lowly, and Freddie shivers.  

Brian unrolls toilet paper from the dispenser, the last dregs of it, and gives Freddie some to wipe his face while carefully dabbing himself dry, trying to make them presentable enough to leave without causing a stir.  “Do you want to head back out there?”

“Will you dance with me?” Freddie asks, shyly hopeful.

Brian laughs gently.  “Freddie,” he says, finally zipping himself up and unlocking the door to the stall, peering out.  “After that, I think I’d do just about anything you asked for.”

He tangles their hands together once he deems the coast clear and tugs Freddie from the stall, back out onto the dance floor.  He still doesn’t know what song is playing but it doesn’t matter, it’s good and heavy and easy to move to.

Brian pulls Freddie through the crowd, finding them a spot in the midst of it all rather than lurking on the fringes like he might otherwise, because he knows that Freddie wants to _actually_ dance and not just bop awkwardly from the edge of the crowd.

And he’s _good_ at dancing, as well.  Brian can’t really keep up with him and definitely can’t move like that but he pulls Freddie back in and spins him around periodically, watching in awe when the split apart and Freddie sways his hips, gyrating like something out of a stripper act, grinding on Brian whenever he’s close enough, his head tipped back onto his shoulder.

It’s hot enough to get Brian hard again even though he just had the orgasm of a lifetime not ten minutes ago and that makes it easier to dance with Freddie, though it’s less of a dance and more of an excuse to rub up against him, but Freddie doesn’t seem to mind.  It’s what most of the people around them are doing, anyway.

Quite a few people are watching Freddie and whenever he breaks away from Brian, there’s always someone there wanting to take over.  Brian laughs and claps along to the beat as Freddie dances with a number of different women, watching him scream with laughter as he picks them up and shakes them about, caging them in his arms and rolling their hips together for a few beats before letting them go and throwing himself back at Brian.

Brian is less keen when other men want to dance with him, particularly one tall blond (not as tall as Brian, but Brian doesn’t like the way Freddie has to tip his chin up to look at him) with gelled hair and a tight t-shirt.  If he hadn’t met Freddie and thus had every other man in the world ruined for him, Brian might have been interested in the guy himself, but tonight he doesn’t even look twice.  There’s nothing there to consider, even for a moment.

Freddie is it for him.  Brian’s been aware of it for a while now, since that first night, really, but it’s true.  This is it.  He doesn’t ever want anything else.

It just feels _right_ when the song transitions smoothly into another and Freddie smoothly disentangles himself and trips his way back into Brian’s arms, warm and damp with sweat and tucked so perfectly against Brian’s chest, grinning into his neck and dancing lazily, out of time with the song that’s blaring.

“Shall we get out of here?” Brian asks after a few minutes of that, when more than one person has given him a pointed shove in the back which he’s ignored.  A club floor isn’t the place for slow-dancing but Freddie’s knees are as good as unlocked, Brian’s arm around his waist keeping him upright, and they’ve just been swaying together. 

“Your place or mine?” Freddie purrs and Brian can’t resist giving his arse a quick pinch before leading him back out of the crowd.

Thankfully it’s never hard to find a taxi in this part of the city at this time of night, though they do charge an absolutely exorbitant price.  Brian will be annoyed about that in the morning; right now all he cares about is being able to kiss Freddie uninterrupted and the back of this slightly grimy cab will do.

There’s a glass privacy barrier up so the driver can’t hear them, fortunately for him as neither of them are taking any great cares to be quiet, particularly when Brian squeezes Freddie through his jeans.

“There you are,” he murmurs, gently massaging him while Freddie bites his lip and strains up against his palm, letting out the most delicious noises.  “I can’t wait to fuck you,” he says, right into Freddie’s ear before catching it between his teeth and biting just a smidge harder than gently.

“God, me either,” Freddie gasps.

“Been thinking about it all day.  All week.  I could do it right here,” Brian continues, glancing quickly at the driver, whose eyes are glued to the road, head bopping along to the radio they can’t hear.  He plays just casually with Freddie’s zipper but doesn’t open it.

Freddie jerks.  “Oh fuck!  You wouldn’t,” he mutters, gripping Brian’s arm hard.  

“I would,” Brian assures him darkly.  “Wouldn’t even care if he saw us.  In fact maybe I’d like it.”  He debates putting a hand inside Freddie’s jeans to stroke him properly but the damn things are so tight he thinks it’ll be a bit too much of a faff in the back of the taxi; besides, just talking about it is managing to drive Freddie crazy all on its own.

“You kinky fucker,” Freddie manages to say, seizing Brian’s mouth for a dirty kiss.  “We’d be arrested.”

“Hmm,” Brian hums, and takes his hand away, tipping his head back against his seat and closing his eyes, lacing his fingers together on his stomach.  “Guess you’ll have to wait then.”

“Fuck!” Freddie cries out, and squirms hard enough in his seat to get stopped in his tracks by the seatbelt’s locking mechanism.  “ _Now_ who’s being a tease?”

Brian smirks and doesn’t open his eyes.  “It’s my turn.”

He hears the click as Freddie unlocks his seatbelt and his eyes fly open, about to tell him not to be stupid when the driver suddenly looks up as well, alerted by a light on his dash.

“Hey!  No!  Put your seatbelt back on, sir!” he calls over the intercom and Freddie purses his lips and quickly sits back, obediently clicking back in.

Brian holds out for a second before he starts sniggering uncontrollably.  “Well,” he manages to say, “he certainly told you.”

“Shut up you shit,” Freddie mutters without heat, though his cheeks are red hot.  “I can’t believe he didn’t have a problem with you _molesting_ me back here but he told me off about _that_!”

Brian snorts again but his hand trails out, running along Freddie’s thigh to appease him.  “Naughty thing,” he says quietly and Freddie swallows audibly.

The last few minutes of the ride back to Brian’s house are torturous; Freddie’s certain he’s going to lose his mind with the way Brian’s hand is just gently resting on his crotch but not _doing_ anything, even when he pushes his own hand down on Brian’s to give him a fucking hint.

Brian’s just _smirking_ and looking straight ahead like he hasn’t even noticed Freddie trying to get off and it drives Freddie fucking wild.

Freddie leaps out of the cab almost before it’s stopped and tugs impatiently on Brian’s hand while he’s trying to tip the driver (generously), then he’s on Brian the second the door shuts.

Not that Brian minds.  At all.  He hauls Freddie in and pushes him against the wall in the hallway, getting a knee between his legs and roughly licking into his mouth.

“Fuck,” Freddie groans.  “Let’s get upstairs, darling, I can’t wait any more.”

And after that blowjob, Brian’s not at all inclined to deny him so he doesn’t draw it out but makes a start for the staircase, made difficult because it’s hard to stop kissing Freddie once he’s started.

They make it to the bedroom eventually and nearly break the bed by falling onto it together, Brian rolling Freddie under him so he can set right back to kissing him, fumbling to get his fly open.

“These...fucking...jeans,” he mutters, pulling away from Freddie’s mouth so he can sit back and get some better leverage.  Freddie’s legs and ass look _great_ in them but they’re so bloody hard to peel off.

Freddie wriggles helpfully, laughing, and Brian manages to get them off eventually, throwing them away with extreme prejudice.

Freddie, of course, isn’t wearing any underwear and Brian grasps him immediately, stroking him gently while he kneels over him, smiling down.  

“Oh fuck,” he says after a moment, groaning.  “Do you know what I’ve just realised?”

“What?” Freddie asks distractedly, gently rocking his hips into the loose circle of Brian’s fist.

“Condoms are in the bathroom.”  He’d had to buy more this week and he’d stupidly chucked them in there with the new toothpaste, intending to relocate them to the bedside table at _any_ point before this one, where he already has Freddie under him.

Freddie huffs.  “Off you go, then,” he says, stilling himself with no small amount of effort.

Brian sighs and rolls off of him, stripping his t-shirt as he goes, darting out the door.  He sheds his jeans on the way back from the bathroom and kicks off his briefs as he steps back into the bedroom, box triumphantly in hand, and pauses to look at Freddie for a moment.

He’s stripped fully naked and he’s sat up amongst Brian’s pillows, helping himself to a sip of water from the probably stale glass on the bedside table, hair mussed and cheeks flushed and so, so perfect.  Brian wants him here like that, every single day.  And it’s not the sex, not just that.  He wants Freddie drinking from the same glass a barely-awake Brian has half drained in the middle of the night.  He wants to fight with him about whose pillow is the flat one.  He wants to see him like this, in Brian’s bed, in _their_ bed, for the rest of his damn life.

“Oh,” Brian lets out softly, and draws closer with less burning desperation than he’d felt on the way out of the room, with some other feeling instead.  He tosses the box down on the bed and crawls up to Freddie, leaning over him and just taking him in, just so fucking _happy_ to have him here that he feels like he could cry with it.

“What?” Freddie asks, stroking a finger down his chest.  “Is everything alright, darling?”

“Yeah,” Brian says, planting himself on Freddie’s thighs and cradling his face in both hands.  “Freddie.  Sweetheart.  Is it too soon to say it?”  His thumbs rub gentle tracks over Freddie’s cheekbones and Freddie frowns delicately.

“Say what?”

“I love you,” Brian whispers in a rush.  

Freddie’s stunned.  His eyes go wide and disbelieving and Brian _loves him_.

“I love you,” Brian says again, kissing him sweetly on the mouth.  “I know it’s soon,” he adds, kissing Freddie’s lax mouth again because Freddie seems too shocked to respond.  “Please don’t panic.  But I do.  I’ve known for a while.”  Brian’s been _married_ before and it didn’t feel like this, it never felt like this until now.  Until Freddie.

“But…” Freddie manages to find his voice eventually, his mouth moving against Brian’s lips because Brian’s still kissing him.  “ _Me_?”

“You,” Brian tells him.  “You’re it for me.  I don’t want anything else.”

Freddie’s eyes are bright, suddenly, and Brian laughs softly, kissing the tiny crinkle that’s formed between his eyebrows.

“Is that okay?” Brian asks him, gently rubbing their noses together while Freddie’s still trying to process.

“ _Okay_?” Freddie repeats, and it sounds like his throat’s gone tight.  “I—I love _you_.  I’m so fucking in love with you.  I’ve been trying not to say it for weeks now.  But you’re too good for me.  You’ll realise soon.”

Brian puts a hand over his mouth, shaking his head.  “That’s rubbish,” he says firmly.  “Absolute rubbish and I’ll tell you that every single day if I have to until you believe me.  I’ll never want anything else.  Just this.  Just you.  And every asshole who’s ever made you feel like you’re not good enough has no fucking _idea_ what he gave up.  But I’m so glad you’re here now.  I’m so glad you’re with me.”  

He knows he’s being sappy but he doesn’t mind, it feels okay, and Freddie’s a tiny bit watery eyed anyway, but Brian squirts lube over his fingers because he wants Freddie to _know_ , he’s going to show him how much he means to him.

He slides one finger in, carefully because they haven’t done this for a while but it goes in smoothly, Freddie relaxed and easy for him.  “Before I met you,” Brian tells him, kissing him gently when he pauses, slowly working Freddie open with his finger.  “I was a mess.  You saw me.  I didn’t know how to deal with...with everything that’d happened.”

Freddie closes his eyes and sniffs a bit and reaches up to kiss Brian, one hand going around the back of his neck.

“But with you…” Brian breathes, carefully adding a second finger, turning them slowly, absently.  “You make everything different.  Waking up with you is the happiest I have _ever_ been.  I don’t know how I could ever make it up to you, how happy you make me.  I just _love_ you, Freddie.”

“Darling,” Freddie whispers, wrecked, and a tear slides down his cheek.  He hugs Brian close, pulls him down to his chest, and Brian turns his head into him.

He hears Freddie let out a muffled sob, feels his chest shake with it under him, and wraps his free arm around him.

“Freddie, baby?  Don’t cry, sweetheart,” Brian soothes him, kissing his jaw, his neck, his shoulder.  

“I just—don’t know how I got here,” Freddie gets out, clinging to him.  “It’s so different with you.  I didn’t know it could be like this.”  His voice is shaking and Brian’s heart breaks.

“Oh, Freddie,” Brian breathes, putting some space between them so he can look at him.  “You deserve so much.  Are you okay?  Do you want me to stop?”

Freddie closes his eyes tight but shakes his head.  “Keep going,” he whispers.  “I love you.  _I love you_.”  Like he can’t believe he can say it, that this is allowed, that Brian loves him, too.

And Brian is so _gentle_ with him, like Freddie’s the most precious thing he’s ever had between his hands, like he really does love him, and the thing is…Freddie believes him.  He does.  He doesn’t know how long it will last, how long it might take for Brian to get bored or annoyed with him, as he knows he will eventually, but right now Brian loves him and Freddie loves him back and it’s more than he’s ever had before.

“Darling, I need _you_ , Brian _please_ ,” Freddie tells him, hooking a leg around Brian’s and holding him as tightly as he can.

“Already?  I don’t want to hurt you,” Brian says, glancing down.

“Just go slow,” Freddie whispers.

And Brian can do that.  He removes his fingers and rolls on a condom and when he pushes in it’s gentle, unhurried, careful.  It’s so _loving_ Freddie almost can’t bear it.  

Brian cradles his head between his palms and keeps kissing him so softly, Freddie doesn’t know what else to do with himself but let himself be kissed.

When he’s all the way in Freddie wraps both legs around him and Brian relaxes, just absorbs the feeling for a few moments, of having Freddie so close and so open for him, the heat of his body, the calm press of their mouths, their heartbeats slowing down together while they lay joined.

It’s not the fuck Brian envisioned on the ride over, but it’s better.  It’s exactly what he needed tonight, and exactly what he suspects Freddie needed from him.

He isn’t sure how much time’s passed before Freddie stirs, wriggles gently under him.  “Bri,” he whispers, and Brian gets the message.

He carefully pulls out and has to use more lube because it’s gone tacky in the time they’ve taken, but he’s equally careful when he pushes back in.

“Brian,” Freddie says suspiciously after a few minutes of this, of being gently kissed and gently fucked.  “Are you _making love_ to me?” he demands.

“Yeah,” Brian breathes into his ear, kissing that, too.  “I love you.”

And Freddie doesn’t have any argument for that.  

They take a long time together.  Brian re-applies lube several more times, his thighs aching and both of them drenched in sweat by the time Freddie starts arching tellingly underneath him, tilting his head up into the pillows and struggling to catch his breath.

“You’re so beautiful,” Brian tells him, no longer able to kiss his mouth with the way Freddie’s turned so kissing his chin and his neck instead.  “You’re so perfect.  I’ve been waiting for you all my life, Freddie.”

Freddie groans and comes quietly over Brian’s fist as Brian tells him, “I love you” again, and again and again as he cants his hips, still not speeding up though he can feel himself getting close.

Freddie lies limp and sated underneath him, his eyes pretty and bright, both hands rubbing Brian’s back until Brian tucks his head into Freddie’s shoulder and presses as deeply into him as he can to finish.  

When he’s done he stills and the only sound in the room is their slow, easy breaths and the ticking of the clock for several long, leisurely minutes.

Brian’s hair is sticking to his neck and the condom is immediately uncomfortable once he’s registered it so he’s driven to pull out eventually, blindly reaching down between them to get it off without sacrificing too much contact with Freddie.

He knows they ought to get up, shower, clean up, but he can’t bring himself to.  Freddie’s eyelids are drifting closed every few seconds and it’s so delicious and warm right where they are, Freddie in his arms, the blankets easily hooked up with one foot.

Brian kisses Freddie on the back of the neck and tangles their legs together, which makes Freddie stir suddenly.

“Brian,” he says, turning over and frowning.  “Do you still have your fucking _socks on_?”

“I get cold feet,” Brian murmurs, kissing his mouth now it’s right there.

“ _Brian_!”  Freddie is horrified by how _unsexy_ that is and how much he doesn’t really mind.  He really _must_ be in love.  “I hate you.”

Brian laughs sleepily and kisses him again.  “You don’t,” he says confidently.  “You love me.”

And he’s right.  Freddie does.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
